Unearthed Arcana Unearthed Arcana: Variant Rules

Not the most useful of articles for me... I won't use any of it. Nothing wrong with it, but I've tried all the ideas in prior editions and determined they were not my cup of tea. I see nothing in 5E that would make the player rolling, Vitality or their version of alignment an improvement for my games.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Distinguishing between a post disparaging an idea (e.g., "total fanboism"), and one disparaging a person as irrational or the like (e.g., "you're a total fanboi") should be fairly easy.

Are the rules unclear? Do not respond to a moderation post in the thread. Got concerns? Take it to Private Message.

 

[Sword of Spirit]

Never mind that almost any potential alternate rule I could probably want for 5E has already been created by someone else already... since it wasn't WotC, it doesn't count!

Actually, that's exactly how I feel about new content. I've only ever used someone's fan content a handful of times in very specific instances. The first was when I ran across it while scrambling to optimize a character so as not to fall way behind a high-optimization group. Another time involves conversions of mass quantities of monster from 2e to 3e, which is way more work than I want to do. Another time involved a third party supplement with an extensive treatment of equipment lists/prices/upkeep that revised the 3e content. And the other time involved a really good spell created by [MENTION=6785902]Fralex[/MENTION] which I modified for my own use.

The majority of the time I simply have no interest in using someone else's unofficial material. I'd like to have something official from WotC, and I will put effort into using it as close to the way they present it to me as I can, and if I have to change it, I'll try to make minor tweaks rather than tossing it out. If they give me nothing, I'll just make my own material more or less from scratch.

For me, part of the value of D&D is the shared assumptions of rules and world. While I could never go strictly RAW or Lore as Written, I like to stay as close as I can stomach so my players get to feel like they are playing D&D rather than "Sword of Spirit's game loosely based off of D&D" -- because I can make my own games as tightly or loosely based on D&D as I want, and I'm not marketing those to my players as D&D.

I hear that a lot from women who like horoscopes. I always wonder if it would still be true if I could swap all the horoscopes around for them beforehand, without them knowing. Meaning, those things are written to appeal to everyone.

Not that I'm poo-pooing MB, mind. I took it, too, and found it fairly accurate. Just wondering how many other assessments I could read and think, "hmm, yeah, that sounds like me, too!"

A lot of people make the mistake that the theory is based on "the" test. It's really not. The theory is a series of ongoing developments based originally on the work of Carl Jung. "The" test is just an inconsistently accurate evaluation tool some of the people involved created to attempt identify a person's best fit in the theory. A serious study of it will ignore the test and go to the theory. A few hours of direct study will dispel any "Barnum statements" and get to the core of the theory's contributions.

 

[Fralex]

Yeah, personality is certainly not "solved" or anything. But while I see some of myself in the descriptions of one or two other personality types (usually similar ones), there are definitely a lot that I have very little in common with, and I just find the whole concept really fascinating. People naturally want to feel like they're part of a unique group, and personality tests fill that desire really well.

Also, I'm glad you liked the spell so much! For those wondering, it's located here.

 

[MagicSN]

For the discussion of Vitality it might be interesting to discuss the way this was handled in the german RPG system
Midgard:

- When an attack hit the defender did a "defense roll"
- If the defense roll with all boni added had at least the value of the attack roll with all boni added,
the defense was successful
- Defense success: The target loses the damage in endurance points
- Defense Fail: The target loses the damage both in Endurance and Life points (minus AC, which in Midgard is just a Damage Malus
to Life point Damage)
- Someone with 0 Endurance points cannot make defense rolls anymore and gets some mali to attack/skill rolls
- Someone with 0 Life points is like someone with 0 HP in D&D
- If you lose 1/3 of your LP in one hit you get extra damage rolled on a special table (there were also tables for rolled
natural 1 and 20 for both attack rolls and defense rolls, some of them were quite deadly)
- AP did raise "per level" while LP only changed if your Con changed (so nearly never...). Being pierced by a sword is
as deadly to a lvl 15 character as it is to a lvl 1 character. Just the lvl 15 character often manages to avoid the hit...
This makes a quite realistic system.

Disadvantages of the Midgard System:

- It slows down combat a lot (two dice rolls per hit, and they need to be matched against each other)
- It made Features which raised your AC too powerful. Most overpowered builds included combat staff as weapon (which allowed
you to add your attack bonus to your defense) for example.
- At high levels a missed defense roll could be pretty bad
- But at high levels defense rolls nearly never failed as defense scaled better than attack on a good build which made the
LP only used "for those few attacks which hit" (Midgard was balanced for low/medium levels, in high levels the system
was awkward)

 

[Klaus]

Vitality seems a little needlessly clunky (the "replaces your CON score for your CON bonus to HP" seems especially prone to "YAY EVERYONE GOT HIT BY A FIREBALL NOW DO MATH FOR 15 MINUTES!"). I like that it ticks down from maximum HP, though - reducing max HP (coming back gradually with rest) is a nice way of modeling lasting damage. That's got legs, it just needs to be calculated better.

The players roll all the dice and alignment stuff seem a mite on the "no doy" side for us experts (who already know what we prefer), but for a newbie DM, they're kind of gold. I'd appreciate some info on setting apart alignment affiliation, I think - what does your alignment get you, how can you use it to drive player action or to make interesting conflicts. That'd be meaty stuff even for old hands.

I wonder if Vitality could be made easier by accruing Wounds (and your max HP is reduced by 1/2 the wounds you have), and if your Wounds are equal or greater than your current hp, your hp drop to 0. SOmething like Red Dragon Inn's health and booze tracks.

 

[GobiWon]

Meh

 

[I'm A Banana]

I wonder if Vitality could be made easier by accruing Wounds (and your max HP is reduced by 1/2 the wounds you have), and if your Wounds are equal or greater than your current hp, your hp drop to 0. SOmething like Red Dragon Inn's health and booze tracks.

Here, I prefer the psychology of having a resource tick down rather than up - gives you the sense that you're losing things, missing things you should have. I think if we just say something like "your CON bonus to HP is lost first, followed by any HP gained from having levels in a class" that might fix it up nicely, and still give folks with a solid CON bonus a benefit for that.

 

[Klaus]

Here, I prefer the psychology of having a resource tick down rather than up - gives you the sense that you're losing things, missing things you should have. I think if we just say something like "your CON bonus to HP is lost first, followed by any HP gained from having levels in a class" that might fix it up nicely, and still give folks with a solid CON bonus a benefit for that.

It wouldn't be a "resource ticking down", but "penalities stacking up" (like a damage track, akin to Shadowrun or SWSE).

Hmm... Food for thought.

 

[I'm A Banana]

It wouldn't be a "resource ticking down", but "penalities stacking up" (like a damage track, akin to Shadowrun or SWSE).

Hmm... Food for thought.

'zactly. Different brain-feel. Doesn't trigger loss-aversion quite as strongly, and I think injury is a place I want that tension of "can I afford this next attack roll?"

 

[steeldragons]

It wouldn't be a "resource ticking down", but "penalities stacking up" (like a damage track, akin to Shadowrun or SWSE).

Hmm... Food for thought.

'zactly. Different brain-feel. Doesn't trigger loss-aversion quite as strongly, and I think injury is a place I want that tension of "can I afford this next attack roll?"

I am with KM on this. There is a distinct drama and tension that builds as things become "less"...you are "running out of" [resources/time/life]. It is an aspect of D&D that...and I don't know why/when it has been minimized, but I definitely do not want it to change to "accumulating penalties/failures."

Accumulating resources/time/life, and yes even penalties, does not affect that same tension in either meta-game or in-world terms. Because, in the back of our heads, we are still "getting/receiving something" and, even if logically we don't WANT it, it feels satisfying that we now have "more" of whatever it is. Losing is not the same emotional ride...and I like my D&D rides to be rollercoasters, not just "stackable moar."

And, as per usual for me, the "but these others games do it this way" is never a cogent argument for me. The only response I can ever see to that is, "That's great...for/in those games." It, in no way, translates to "ergo, this is something D&D should be incorporating."