What do I run?

[Eltern]

Over time, I have developed a truly stunning amount of house rules. At this point, I'm really not playing D&D at all. Now, whenever I get a new player, I have to say "We're playing D&D, but this and this and this and this are all different". I'm interested to see if there's a published system out there that fits my tastes, so I can simply say "We're running X" instead of a homebrew system. The following are the modifications to D&D. Can anyone suggest a system that falls near to it?

PDFs
1. "Buy the Numbers" A great PDF product from the ENWorld store, it breaks down all character abilities into XP costs. So, there are no classes or levels, just abilities that you purchase with awarded XP.
2. "Elements of Magic: Revised" Another awesome PDF product, this one replaces Vancian magic for a spell point system where the caster can create spell effects on the fly, combining spell effects that he knows. (Both spell points and spell effects are purchased with XP for the Buy the Numbers system)

Combat
3a. There are no hitpoints. Instead each character has 7 levels of being wounded. Being more wounded gives you penalties to various things.
3b. Combat works like this: Attacker makes their attack roll, defender makes a defense roll. Divide the difference by the attacking weapon's damage rating. If the result is positive, that's the number of wound levels the defender takes. If it's negative, the attacker suffers that penalty on his defense rolls that round.
3c. How this actually works: Big weapons like greatswords have small damage levels (let's say 2), while small weapons like daggers have large ones (let's say 4). So if the attacker rolls a 20 and the defender a 10, the defender would take 5 wound levels from a greatsword, and 2 from a dagger. However, if the attacker rolled 10 and the defender 20, the attacker gets a -5 from a greatsword, and only a -2 from a dagger. So, big weapons hit harder, but they're unweildy.
3d. Armor absorbs damage levels dealt. Defense rolls are based on dex and a "base defense bonus" ability, bought just like BAB with XP.

And I'm contemplating putting in hit locations, where each limb, the torso, and head each have their own wound levels.

Now, that's really only three changes, but they're three -big- changes, which just about throw everything out the window. I also run very low magic items (My present campaign had -one-, a bag of holding).

So, from what I know of it, GURPS is a lot like this. But I know virtually -nothing- about GURPS, so that might be wrong. And I'm fairly certain that I don't like the roll under 3d6 mechanic. Is there anything else out there?

Thanks!

 

[Aus_Snow]

The wound track / defence / soak idea sounds a bit like the Grim n Gritty system, by Ken Hood. That might be worth checking out.

For d20 fantasy, I also use called shots and critical effects etc. These are derived partly from Torn Asunder: Critical Hits (by Bastion Press), partly from the Advanced Player's Guide (by Sword & Sorcery) and elsewhere, and significantly from contemplation + trial and error. It adds more complexity to combat - of course - but I think the tradeoff is worth it.

And GURPS is rather radically different again. I'd be willing (as others would be, I'm sure) to tell you more about that if you like, but I get the impression it mightn't be what you're looking for.

 

[genshou]

Grim-n-Gritty Revised and Simplified, Elements of Magic (Revised or Mythic Earth). But I still use classes and levels. Sometimes I let the classes be a little more flexible (via the Classically Modern generic classes), but they still have to take classes and follow that structure. You might be a little too far off the beaten path of normal rules, though. Have you looked into any other rulesets yet, and what did you think of them?

 

[Eltern]

Well, I'm still manipulating the combat attack/wounds system, but it was inspired heavily by Shadowrun and Grim n Gritty. I've read both of these, but only ran Shadowrun. I've read -about- GURPS, but have yet to -read- GURPS.

Basically, any system that I would like to run would have to have a few things:
1. No classes. Players pick exactly what abilities they have.
2. Fairly freeform magic (No predetermined spells, but weilding different aspects of magic to make an effect).
3. A combat system that was fairly realistic in how it describes what's happening to you. Hit points seems like the bottom of the barrel in this respect, and specific wounds on specific hit locations seems like the best there is. But I could definitely go for something else, if it worked.

I'm also a HUGE fan of simple resolution systems. Rolling lots of dice and doing lots of counting and lots of adding/subtracting annoys me, because it slows down gameplay heavily. This is the primary reason why I can' handle Shadowrun, because of the "successes" model that requires rolling dozens of dice for any task. It's just a pain to count out your dice! I really like D20's simple use of the d20, and that's it (except for damage, which I'm trying to take out).

Other notes: The Hero system sounded interesting, but when I actually looked at the first few pages of the book in my FLGS, it seemed a bit too complex in its resolution mechanic (Don't remember how, as it was awhile ago). I've also heard whisperings about Alternity, but I also hear that's class-based.

I would simply use GrimnGritty with Elements of Magic and Buy the Numbers, but
1. That doesn't gain me anything in finding a complete system to use I've just replaced one homebrew combat system with another.
2. I want to get away from rolling damage for weapons. I want the difference between the attacker's roll and the defender's roll to be the only variable, because it speeds things up. Also, it fits more with reality for me. How, exactly, were you really, really successful in hitting your opponent, but screwed up the dealing of damage?

 

[Spatzimaus]

I really like D20's simple use of the d20, and that's it (except for damage, which I'm trying to take out).

A while back in my campaign, we added a "Take Half" rule, inspired by the "Take 10" rules. That is, if you need to roll lots of d6's for spell damage, sneak attacks, etc., you could just say you rolled a 3 on each die. You'd lose a little damage (10d6 = 35 would drop to 30), but the savings in time made it pretty popular. This extended to all the other dice, as well (Magic missiles' d4+1 would do 3 per, Delayed Blast Fireball's d8s do 4 per).

We didn't allow this rule to apply to weapon damage, generally, for two reasons:
1> The damage die is generally overshadowed by flat bonuses (STR, Weapon Specialization, Enhancement mods), even if you consider bonus dice from Flaming/Frost/whatever. So you're not really wasting much time.
2> Having a bit of randomness in repeatable attacks is a good thing; if your weapon always does 13 damage per hit, then the difference in effort between a 12HP foe and a 14HP one is huge. It's okay to remove randomness from a one-shot spell that does 10 dice (and therefore would fall pretty close to the mean naturally), but this is different.

 

[genshou]

A while back in my campaign, we added a "Take Half" rule, inspired by the "Take 10" rules. That is, if you need to roll lots of d6's for spell damage, sneak attacks, etc., you could just say you rolled a 3 on each die. You'd lose a little damage (10d6 = 35 would drop to 30), but the savings in time made it pretty popular. This extended to all the other dice, as well (Magic missiles' d4+1 would do 3 per, Delayed Blast Fireball's d8s do 4 per).

We didn't allow this rule to apply to weapon damage, generally, for two reasons:
1> The damage die is generally overshadowed by flat bonuses (STR, Weapon Specialization, Enhancement mods), even if you consider bonus dice from Flaming/Frost/whatever. So you're not really wasting much time.
2> Having a bit of randomness in repeatable attacks is a good thing; if your weapon always does 13 damage per hit, then the difference in effort between a 12HP foe and a 14HP one is huge. It's okay to remove randomness from a one-shot spell that does 10 dice (and therefore would fall pretty close to the mean naturally), but this is different.

Ah, but the randomness is already factored into this proposed combat system via extra damage for exceeding the target's Defense roll, just like in Grim-n-Gritty. I've been using average damage with Grim-n-Gritty in playtests, and it works so much better.

 

[Eltern]

Ah, but the randomness is already factored into this proposed combat system via extra damage for exceeding the target's Defense roll, just like in Grim-n-Gritty.

Exactly.

So, it sounds like nobody immediately has something that fits well, as written. If anyone else has an idea, be sure to let me know. In the mean time, maybe I should focus on honing my own game into exactly what I want. I'm still trying to get the numbers on combat to work out right. I've made a chart of numbers that does about what I'd like, but I'm having trouble converting it into a mathematical system. I could just use the chart, of course, but I'm (theoretically) playing D&D, not Rolemaster :-D

 

[playwithbob]

PDFs
1. "Buy the Numbers" A great PDF product from the ENWorld store, it breaks down all character abilities into XP costs. So, there are no classes or levels, just abilities that you purchase with awarded XP.
2. "Elements of Magic: Revised" Another awesome PDF product, this one replaces Vancian magic for a spell point system where the caster can create spell effects on the fly, combining spell effects that he knows. (Both spell points and spell effects are purchased with XP for the Buy the Numbers system)

Can you go into the xp costs you came up with to get EoM to work with BtN please?

I'm also (thanks to this post) trying to marry the 2 systems. My hang up is xp costs for spell points and xp costs for each list.

With 250 spell lists it seems over the top to make a player pay for each one up to 20th level.

Throw mw a bone.

PWB

 

[Eltern]

+1 Max MP: 250 * (New Max MP) +1 Free Cantrip/Day: 5 * (New Number of Cantrips)
+5 MP/Day: (New Total MP) +1 Spell List: 25 * (New Number of Spell Lists)

+1 Signature Spell: 10 * (New Number of Signature Spells)

NOT an easy thing to calculate. I'm the DM, so I don't have to pay attention to that stuff, but it would seem to me that my players would be annoyed by the kind of calculations that they have to do for this. Then again, purchasing skill points is even more annoying with BTN, and I've never heard my players complain about either.

 

[Aus_Snow]

True20 achieves just about all of what you're doing with d20, and with the addition of something like True Sorcery (or possibly EoM), the rest would follow suit.

There's a wound track, not HP. It has Defence, not AC.

If it's not immediately obvious, I (fairly) recently picked up True20, and like it quite a bit.


edit --- fixed a major mistake there.