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

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Keldryn" data-source="post: 5894247" data-attributes="member: 11999">Character Creation<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Fast character creation:  roll your 6 ability scores, pick a class and race, buy equipment, name your character.  Roll for/choose a secondary skill and adjust abilities for age category if you're using those rules.  10 to 15 minutes and you're done.  The flexibility of having hundreds of feats, powers, alternate class features, and substitution levels can be nice, but searching through half a dozen books to find just the right ability for your character can easily push character creation time to a couple of hours.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Organic character growth.  You don't plan your advancement from 1st level through the "endgame" to make sure that you can qualify for everything that you need to "realize your character concept."</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Characters of similar archetypes are differentiated by what they do in the game instead of what special abilities and modifiers they have on their character sheet.</li> </ul>Magic<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Magic that is very powerful but potentially dangerous.  Teleport spells that can make you materialize inside solid rock if you're not careful.  Spells like haste that can age you prematurely.  Polymorph spells that carry a risk of killing you (system shock roll).  "The thing about magic -- there's always consequences -- always!"  Spike, Buffy the Vampire Slayer</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Powerful magic that isn't easily recovered.  1st level spells require the caster to have slept at least 4 hours and take 15 minutes per spell to memorize.  9th level spells require 12 hours of rest and 3 hours of study to memorize a single spell.  A 10th-level magic-user going nova with all of his spells in a 15-minute adventuring day would mean having to rest a full 8 hours and then spend almost 10 hours preparing all of his spells again.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Divine and arcane magic don't have a great deal of overlap</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Clerics and Druids have no more than 12 spells per level on their spells lists -- when you get to choose freely every day from your entire spell list, it needs to be a pretty concise list</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Resurrection that isn't guaranteed to work, and which has an upper limit (-1 to Con every time you are brought back to life).</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Illusionists have a distinct spell list from magic-users, including many exclusive spells.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Acquisition of spells and magic items are mostly up to the DM</li> </ul>Gameplay<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Combat is abstract; 1-minute rounds allow for any reasonable character actions without having to enforce a structure "action economy"</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Combat is fast; a low-level encounter can often be resolved in 10 minutes.  Even higher-level encounters with a large number of combatants are unlikely to take much longer than 30 minutes.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">XP for treasure acquired:  oft-derided as not making sense, this is simply a quick and easy way to judge the "challenge level" of an adventure.  The assumption is that the most valuable treasures will be hidden in the most difficult-to-reach locations and PCs will encounter the most dangerous monsters on the way there and back.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Group initiative: this makes combat move quickly and keeps all of the players engaged in the game as they all take their turns pretty much simultaneously.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Hit point acquisition levels off.  Once characters reach "name" level (9th to 11th depending on class), they stop getting a full hit die plus con bonus to hit points and simply gain 1, 2, or 3 hit points per level.  There are no monsters with 500 or 1,200 hit points.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Saving throws that aren't affected by caster or monster level.  A high-level fighter can resist most spells cast at him and shrug off a dragon's breath simply because he is tough and awesome.</li> </ul>And perhaps one of the most important things:  the players don't need to know all of the rules, and a brand-new player doesn't have to learn much before he can start playing.  I've never had a new player not "get" how to play Basic D&D or AD&D within minutes, unlike my experience with teaching WotC D&D to new players.</blockquote>

Verification