What are people homebrewing?

[pemerton]

Wow, I *really* like that concept.

Thanks.

Thoughts?

I believe others have used the Disease/Curse track for this sort of thing.

I would suggest the Remove Affliction ritual as the magical healing for wounds, if you want to allow magical healing at all.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Thanks.

I believe others have used the Disease/Curse track for this sort of thing.

I would suggest the Remove Affliction ritual as the magical healing for wounds, if you want to allow magical healing at all.

Yeah, in HoML I have the concept of an Affliction, which is just generalizing the disease track. You CAN inflict wounds this way, though its left to specific circumstances as opposed to a general rule where it happens often or under specific mechanical conditions. Instead I've left it as a narrative device. The GM can specify conditions as he wishes under which an affliction will happen. Afflictions form a specific case of a more general class of Limitations. These are sort of 'anti-boons' which can, again for story reasons, be levied on characters. Afflictions have a progress track, the more general limitations are just specific unvarying penalties, not usually things that can just be 'recovered from' (though some might be fixable).

 

[Myrhdraak]

Finally, I'm adding "Ritual Points" as a sort of Vancian system for 4e rituals. It should encourage them to be used more often. I'm rewriting a chunk of the ritual list, grabbing spells from other editions to round it out. I've not determined if I'll keep it tied to 4e levels or make it have the more traditional levels 1-9.


My "future" goal is to tweak 4e math down closer to 5e's Bounded Accuracy, though I have no idea how well that would go. Defenses and DCs should be simple enough, but monster hp vs PC damage is where I feel I'll stumble if I rip out the "1/2 level bonus".

Would be happy to trade some of the work I have done on a 4th Edition Rituals Compendium in exchange for the other spells you have converted to the 4th edition ritual format. Are also now playing 4th Edition (or 4.5 as I call it) with bounded accuracy rules. Really fun as DM as you can mixa and match a much wider range of monsters.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Would be happy to trade some of the work I have done on a 4th Edition Rituals Compendium in exchange for the other spells you have converted to the 4th edition ritual format. Are also now playing 4th Edition (or 4.5 as I call it) with bounded accuracy rules. Really fun as DM as you can mixa and match a much wider range of monsters.

Well, any of us can combine our efforts if we are all using OGL (I'd say we could use a CC license of some type, but OGL does have the virtue of giving you some cover from WotC for 'D&D-like' games). HoML has an OGL attached to it anyway. Not that there's a huge amount to share...

 

[Pobman]

I've been pondering about doing a 4E hack when I've finished my curent project. My aim would be to rewrite player bits only so that I could still use all of my DM stuff. I haven't given it much thought though, apart from a thought about redoing Martial PCs.

I was thinking of taking all of the martial powers, taking similar ones and combining them into a single power. Your attack roll determines the level of the power (oh and you've still got to hit obviously). So for example [NOTE: numbers just pulled out of my arse]:
1-12 - Basic At-will version of the power
13-17 - Encounter version of the power
18-19 - Daily version of the power
20 - Critical hit version of the Daily power

Then a martial character would just pick a few of these. As the PC levels up they would get acess to new combined powers, or the power level of the existing powers increase. It's similar to the way 13th Age does things, but with a clear the-power-gets-better-as-your-roll increases.

I dunno, probably a dumb idea - I haven't thought it through much, there might not be enough similar existing powers that would fall into a neat combination for new powers, how would it interact with other rules etc. But it's been rolling around in the back of my mind as the start of a new project.

 

[Cyvris]

Would be happy to trade some of the work I have done on a 4th Edition Rituals Compendium in exchange for the other spells you have converted to the 4th edition ritual format. Are also now playing 4th Edition (or 4.5 as I call it) with bounded accuracy rules. Really fun as DM as you can mixa and match a much wider range of monsters.

Most of them I've quite literally ripped from 3.5e and 5e. I've yet to really adjust the wording, mostly just swapping out "Makes a X Save". For the most part I dislike how 4e writes rituals. Most "magic" in 4e feels very empty, so I might actually tweak them to a bit to have them read like previous editions.

My biggest reason for wanting Bounded Accuracy in 4e is to keep the number of edits to character sheets low. 4e to me has always seemed to need heaps of character sheets, unlike previous editions.

Seems like there should be a point at which they 'graduate' to being able to hold their own. Not sure how that would work, maybe just there are certain items or whatnot that bypass the 'Wounds' rule.

I like this suggestion. I'm almost tempted to have it progress from "wound at 1/2" health in Heroic, to bloodied at 1/3 in paragon, and 1/4 at Epic. Either way, I think he grubbiness would be interesting. Plus, HP does increase during level, making it a little less "deadly" as the heroes increase in level.

Regaining actual hitpoints I was going to tie to "Heal" checks. An Easy DC granting back just Wis mod, Medium a d4, Hard a d6 etc. Giving Heal a greater purpose in the game would be nice. Endurance could work there as well. I'm currently kicking around a "Skill Point" system which is basically "You get points to spend and gain all the skill powers of a certain level", so I might combine those.

The suggestion of items is interesting, especially since I was going to tie "supplies" into allowing characters to even spend healing surges in the first place. Perhaps combining the two could work well and really drive home just how tough Athas is.

I would suggest the Remove Affliction ritual as the magical healing for wounds, if you want to allow magical healing at all.

That could be interesting, though Dark Sun is pretty low magic. Of course at the same time I'm playing with making Rituals easier to cast, so maybe it'll all wash out.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I've been pondering about doing a 4E hack when I've finished my curent project. My aim would be to rewrite player bits only so that I could still use all of my DM stuff. I haven't given it much thought though, apart from a thought about redoing Martial PCs.

I was thinking of taking all of the martial powers, taking similar ones and combining them into a single power. Your attack roll determines the level of the power (oh and you've still got to hit obviously). So for example [NOTE: numbers just pulled out of my arse]:
1-12 - Basic At-will version of the power
13-17 - Encounter version of the power
18-19 - Daily version of the power
20 - Critical hit version of the Daily power

Then a martial character would just pick a few of these. As the PC levels up they would get acess to new combined powers, or the power level of the existing powers increase. It's similar to the way 13th Age does things, but with a clear the-power-gets-better-as-your-roll increases.

I dunno, probably a dumb idea - I haven't thought it through much, there might not be enough similar existing powers that would fall into a neat combination for new powers, how would it interact with other rules etc. But it's been rolling around in the back of my mind as the start of a new project.

Well, we've all considered some sort of consolidation of powers. I think all powers should scale in measurable ways.

 

[pemerton]

Dark Sun is pretty low magic.

I'm three sessions into a first-level Dark Sun game. So far it's not low magic - plenty of psionics action!

 

[Cyvris]

Psionics are always tossed about pretty liberally, though I never really equate them so much with "healing" in my mind.

On condensing powers, I sort of want to mash each "tier" into a single pool of like 12 (cutting out redundant powers) and let players pick any power from the list at the appropriate levels (1/3/7). It should get rid of "samey" powers for the most part and could even extend across power sources.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

I started out with the concept of archetypes, warrior, mystic, and trickster. Then every class would be a manifestation of one of those three. However, it didn't really mesh with power sources cleanly at all, and I LIKE power sources. Archetypes were kinda nice, but power source give you more connectivity with the rest of the setting's cosmology and whatnot. Archetype is only about YOU, but power source helps define relationships. So I finally ditched archetype as just being redundant. In any case it was feeling kinda like there were just 3 classes, and that was a bit restrictive, even if they each had a bunch of 'subclasses' (that were called class). Obviously the archetype approach WILL work, and you can spin it to be much like 2e's classes, were the 'group' provided some rules hooks but no actual features.

My idea is characters always start with 3 major boons. Your race can provide one or more, your background can provide one, and your class always provides at least one, but could provide 2, or even 3 (if you just ignore all your racial boons, which is allowed). You also get a few racial attributes, and background gives you some implicit knowledge. You can actually start out 'doubled down' on your race, or even tripled down on your race and not pick any of your class boons at all starting out. You'll still have your power source, which gives access to some thematic powers, and a damage die that reflects your role as well, as well as your weapon/implement/skill stuff from your class. You can always acquire class boons in the usual way later too, it just means you're more 'dwarfy' and less 'knightly' or whatever. Likewise you can forgo any background boon if you want, though you always get some training out if it if you want it.

There are a bunch of things I do with 'Healing Surges', that is Vitality Points, which can be used to power up 'encounter' powers multiple times, and which are required to unleash a 'daily' type of power. You don't really get more points than in 4e, roughly, though, which means you really can't toss out Vitality powers, or do recharges, much. It does allow for a bit of extra use of a really signature power though, when its fully appropriate. You can get a point back after a milestone.

Interesting.

Do Vitality Points not run out much faster this way? I found that increasing uses for them made them run out far too quickly without also increasing the number a bit.

But, I also did make it so that Encounter powers cost 1 Surge to use, and Daily powers cost 2, and you can spend 1 Attribute Surge to reroll a skill check that uses an attribute associated with that attribute. *

Additionally, Action Points can be used to activate a Daily Power, or to use an Encounter power with Advantage on the first roll associated with it. Usually it's better to just use it for an extra Action, but sometimes it's better to use it to do a Daily without depleting Surges.

If you're curious, the way I increased Surges was to tie them to give each player a number of Reflex, Fortitude, and Will Surges equal to their Defense bonus, which is the modifier of the attribute used to calculate each defense. So, if you've a 16 dex, your Reflex Defense Bonus is 3, and you have 3 Reflex Surges.

*If you flub a check with Str or Con, you can reroll OR add a 1d6 by spending a Fortitude Surge, if it's Dex or Int, use a Reflex Surge, and Will Surge for Cha or Wisdom. Or use an Action Point to reroll as per the Surge reroll, but you roll twice and take the best of the three d20 results.

The character sheet will have tick boxes for your Attribute Surges and Hero Surges (what I'm calling healing surges), for ease of tracking.

I too keep power source, and many of the Talents in the game will be organized by power source rather than class. I've converting 4e powers into a more Saga-style format. Talents are either Saga style talents, or give Abilities, which are things like Force powers or Starship maneuvers in Saga, but cover a range more like 4e powers. Since they are all Talents, classes get a talent of a given level when 4e would give a power. This allows you to either focus on using a few Talents a lot, or even take mostly passive Talents, or to have a plethora of distinct, singular abilities like a classic 4e character.
Most characters will be somewhere in between.


[sblock=To be clear regarding Archetypes in my own RPG] my use of Archetype is as a class replacement, rather than an overclass with subclasses. There are many distinct Archetypes, like Theif, Assassin, Champion, Captain, Ranger, Hunter, Warlock, and Alchemist, and also some very world specific ones, like Knight of The Red Dragon, Order of Nuada Alchemist, and Benedante.

Each Archetype gives you 2 Inherent Skills , which you always have Accurate Dice with (which is the game's minor bonus. you always reroll 1's if you have accurate dice) and are trained with 1 rank automatically, and 1 Inherent Trait, which you gain automatically when taking the Archetype.

Then you choose 4 more skills (each character starts with 15 or so skills trained, which is less than half the skills in the game) from the Archetype's skill list, and have a 5 Character Point discount on any traits chosen from your Archetype's trait list. In this way, you can effectively "multi-class" even from level one, but buying another classes Inherent trait and/or some of it's discounted traits, or you can stay purely in your own Archetype. Staying within Archetype costs less, so its usually best to keep most of your starting traits within your own Archetype, but it won't make a huge difference in overall efficacy.

Then Origin is a mix of your race, how you were raised, where you're from, and what you do/used to do (for a living or whatever. your main focus as person outside of adventuring) Each part gives 2 skills, and your race gives certain features. I may give each race some discounted traits, for people who want to focus more on race and culture and background than Archetype, or I may release something later on that features Racial Archetypes, or both.

I know that the main way the system deals with "half" races and mixed race ancestry is for characters to take race specific traits from the other race, with DM discretion, and use parts of an origin tied to the other race. I may also break the traits from races down into point values, but that gets too fiddly for a core book I think.

Anyway, I'd love to compare notes on the system with you, if it sounds interesting. here is a link to my forums for the game, and the setting/game pitch. http://questforchevar.proboards.com/thread/22/quest-chevar
[/sblock]