What rules don't work?

[glass]

It [spycraft] simply does not have them. You get two actions per round, either of which can be an attack, at your attack bonus.

Simple as it seems, you really can't retrofit this into D&D without doing lots and lots of rework with snowballing consequences.

I am trying to do just that, or something rather like it, over at this thread in houserules:

http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?p=2235559#post2235559

Does Spycraft not have full round actions at all, or just not full attacks? If not at all, how does it handle things like charge thats are FRAs in D&D?

glass.

 

[Psion]

Does Spycraft not have full round actions at all, or just not full attacks?

No full attacks. It just has half and full round actions. No "standard" actions, either; either of your half round actions can be attacks.

 

[No Name]

The folks you game with probably don't have a Strength of 10. 10 Strength is average in the D&D world ... modern average should be significantly lower.

Lets give that human 4 strength. S/he can still make a DC 8 jump check half of the time. If 4 isn't "significantly low" enough for you, then drop the strength to 1. Then the DC 8 is made 40% of the time. That's still far, far better than any gamer buddy of mine can do on a good day with an up draft under the basket.

Now don't think I'm arguing that D&D skills should reflect skills in the real world, unrealistic stuff happens in the movies often enough. It's all just entertainment. But it would have been nice if the person who designed the skills had given a little more thought to jump. The DC increase should be around 10 per foot, not 4. There should also be penalties for overweight and obese characters that work similar to armor check penalties.

 

[Storm Raven]

The folks you game with probably don't have a Strength of 10. 10 Strength is average in the D&D world ... modern average should be significantly lower.

Are you sure? Modern humans are significantly healthier than anyone in a pre-industrial world. Improvements in diet, medical technology, and so on have made modern humans bigger and stronger than in the past.

 

[Voadam]

Conversly, I'd rather take away iterative weapon attacks than add iterative natural attacks. High level D&D can already involve huge numbers of attacks on both sides. The lastthing it needs is to give them more.

BTW, ancient dragon have roughly twice as many attacks as wyrmlings.


glass.

I haven't used any dragons as a DM in 3e except narratively. Don't they all get 1 bite, 2 claws, 2 wing buffets, and 1 tail sweep regardless of age category?

All right, checking it out in the srd reveals that they progressively get wing and tail attacks with all their attacks at size medium and then size large.

I stand corrected for the wyrmlings who can start out with 3-5 natural attacks as opposed to the six natural attacks of any large or larger dragon.

Regardless it is the natural attack/iterative attack rules discrepancy which just feels wierd and unjustified. Everybody with iteratives or everybody with just one attack would feel better either way.

 

[diaglo]

Are you sure? Modern humans are significantly healthier than anyone in a pre-industrial world. Improvements in diet, medical technology, and so on have made modern humans bigger and stronger than in the past.

and lazier and more obese.

 

[Storm Raven]

and lazier and more obese.

Not necessarily. Third world diets give a rough indicator of the type of diet a pre-industial denizen would likely live on, and in many countries the complete lack of nutritional content in most of the diet (heavy on low grade grains) results in a surprisingly obese population. And laziness is just as prevalent in the Third World as in the industrialized world.

 

[der_kluge]

I thought of a new rule (or concept) in d20 that really irks me.

The idea that I can pick up one class and automatically gain all those class benefits.

For example, I playa cloistered cleric. Cloistered clerics are a rule variant in Unearthed Arcana. They get d6 HD, 6 skill points per level, a wizard BAB, bardic lore, and a bonus domain. They also can use simple weapons, and wear light armor.

On the surface it sounds like a good class, and I really do like the class. But consider this: I could take 1 level of regular cleric, not lose any spellcasting benefits, and immediately gain heavy armor proficiency. Then I could legitimately walk around in full plate armor as a cloistered cleric.

I hear all the time about people "cherry-picking" classes to gain different sorts of abilities. The very idea of an ability belonging to a class is an odd concept. In fact, the very idea of a classes is a bit odd, but that's a sacred cow best left untouched, I understand that.

Still, it's kind of broken the way it's currently done.

 

[Voadam]

I thought of a new rule (or concept) in d20 that really irks me.

The idea that I can pick up one class and automatically gain all those class benefits.

For example, I playa cloistered cleric. Cloistered clerics are a rule variant in Unearthed Arcana. They get d6 HD, 6 skill points per level, a wizard BAB, bardic lore, and a bonus domain. They also can use simple weapons, and wear light armor.

On the surface it sounds like a good class, and I really do like the class. But consider this: I could take 1 level of regular cleric, not lose any spellcasting benefits, and immediately gain heavy armor proficiency. Then I could legitimately walk around in full plate armor as a cloistered cleric.

I hear all the time about people "cherry-picking" classes to gain different sorts of abilities. The very idea of an ability belonging to a class is an odd concept. In fact, the very idea of a classes is a bit odd, but that's a sacred cow best left untouched, I understand that.

Still, it's kind of broken the way it's currently done.

In your example though, don't you have to pick just one cleric class? Like a character taking either rogue or wilderness rogue? So to get plate mail you'd have to multiclass into something that does not give you cleric stuff, like fighter or paladin. Or would the level 1 cleric be in addition to and not stack with cloistered cleric spells like a druid taking a level of cleric dedicated to a nature god?

Does it bug you that multiclassing for one level is a good way to pick up armor proficiencies, or into wizard to get scribe scroll, or ranger for track? The one dip for such minor benefits seems OK to me. It is much better than in 3e when monks and rangers were more front loaded. Two or more levels is a significant dip for multiclassing for a few abilities and has its own costs which seem mostly balanced.

 

[The_Gneech]

I thought of a new rule (or concept) in d20 that really irks me.

The idea that I can pick up one class and automatically gain all those class benefits.

For example, I playa cloistered cleric. Cloistered clerics are a rule variant in Unearthed Arcana. They get d6 HD, 6 skill points per level, a wizard BAB, bardic lore, and a bonus domain. They also can use simple weapons, and wear light armor.

On the surface it sounds like a good class, and I really do like the class. But consider this: I could take 1 level of regular cleric, not lose any spellcasting benefits, and immediately gain heavy armor proficiency. Then I could legitimately walk around in full plate armor as a cloistered cleric.

I hear all the time about people "cherry-picking" classes to gain different sorts of abilities. The very idea of an ability belonging to a class is an odd concept. In fact, the very idea of a classes is a bit odd, but that's a sacred cow best left untouched, I understand that.

Still, it's kind of broken the way it's currently done.

Star Wars gets around that by only giving you one feat from a new class, and a reduced Defense bonus, which strikes me as a good compromise. (Weapon and armor proficiencies are all done as feats in SW ... so somebody who starts as a fringer and multiclasses to soldier will pick up ONE new proficiency, but not all of them.) Of course, SW is designed on the idea that multiclassing is the norm, not the exception.

-The Gneech