What I said about stats being the same as D20 can be ignored:
There will be 8 stats alltold, with a stat score from 0 to three (monsters and animals may have much higher stats, or they may have null stats. 1 is average for a human. There are innate and trained stats.
Innate stats cannot increase from leveling up, the innate stats are: Size, Toughness, Logic, and intuition.
The trained stats can be improved with leveling, they are: Athletics, endurance, education and experience.
When rolling, the formula will be d20+relevant skill+stat, one or two stats will apply, depending on the speciic rule:
Examples melee damage gets a bonus from size, and attack rolls get a bonus from athletics. Hit points get a bonus from size and toughness, and vigor points get a bonus from toughness and endurance.
Sunday, April 15, 2012
Thursday, April 12, 2012
Profile of a character
So in an effort to dump as much of the work I've already done, here's everything that needs to go onto a character sheet:
Basic stats, str, dex, con, int, wis, cha. I see no real reason to change these (I could rename wisdom to perception, which better describes how I feel it works, but I'd have to rename perception the skill, which would be annoying). Each character has a class, I have six PC classes in mind as is; fighter, mage, thief, and classes of each.
A level, from 1-5 (I don't see the need for 20 levels, it breeds Red Queen mechanics, and fewer levels helps keep the players manageablely powerful instead of earth shaking engines of destruction). It'll be possible to advance past the max level, using the mechanics of epic 6 (every 5000 xp nets you a feat, or 10,000 xp a gestalt level, and there will be feats only available to max level (N)PCs.)
Skills: Basically these will look like pathfinder skills, up to one level per rank, and a +3 bonus for class skills. Reworking skills themselves as needed, saving that for another post.
Feats: probably one every other level per pathfinder.
Hit points and vigor points: This is a cribbed mechanic from the alternate rules book for 3.5. In essence, vigor points look like hit points do now, (IE, you get more per level, there's no penalty for losing them, and they're easy to get back), hit points (a fixed number of them, equal to CON score) represent the gap between totally fine and dead. Any hit point loss means taking -2 on all rolls, and 1 point of bleed from lethal damage to HP. This is for PCs Mooks (the bulk of npcs) don't get vigor points, they just just bleed out and die from the first magic missile.
*or 4 or 6, exactly how many I need will be cemented once I start fleshing out classes
Magic for those classes that have it: I don't freaking know. Probably Vancian just because there's no good way to deal with balancing mages and non mages, so unless I come up with something spectacular Vancian magic is at least familiar and I've got a few fun ways to play with it in mind.
Equipment: Departing from the D&D mechanic of money buying you powerful crap, there are things that can be bought, and these are easy for the PC to get (money will mostly be a concern for consumable items, gear that lasts comes with the character). There is equipment that can be crafted (which is available either through class skills or sinking power into crafting via feats), and finally there is gear that is only available via favors (which are quest rewards).
Basic stats, str, dex, con, int, wis, cha. I see no real reason to change these (I could rename wisdom to perception, which better describes how I feel it works, but I'd have to rename perception the skill, which would be annoying). Each character has a class, I have six PC classes in mind as is; fighter, mage, thief, and classes of each.
A level, from 1-5 (I don't see the need for 20 levels, it breeds Red Queen mechanics, and fewer levels helps keep the players manageablely powerful instead of earth shaking engines of destruction). It'll be possible to advance past the max level, using the mechanics of epic 6 (every 5000 xp nets you a feat, or 10,000 xp a gestalt level, and there will be feats only available to max level (N)PCs.)
Skills: Basically these will look like pathfinder skills, up to one level per rank, and a +3 bonus for class skills. Reworking skills themselves as needed, saving that for another post.
Feats: probably one every other level per pathfinder.
Hit points and vigor points: This is a cribbed mechanic from the alternate rules book for 3.5. In essence, vigor points look like hit points do now, (IE, you get more per level, there's no penalty for losing them, and they're easy to get back), hit points (a fixed number of them, equal to CON score) represent the gap between totally fine and dead. Any hit point loss means taking -2 on all rolls, and 1 point of bleed from lethal damage to HP. This is for PCs Mooks (the bulk of npcs) don't get vigor points, they just just bleed out and die from the first magic missile.
*or 4 or 6, exactly how many I need will be cemented once I start fleshing out classes
Magic for those classes that have it: I don't freaking know. Probably Vancian just because there's no good way to deal with balancing mages and non mages, so unless I come up with something spectacular Vancian magic is at least familiar and I've got a few fun ways to play with it in mind.
Equipment: Departing from the D&D mechanic of money buying you powerful crap, there are things that can be bought, and these are easy for the PC to get (money will mostly be a concern for consumable items, gear that lasts comes with the character). There is equipment that can be crafted (which is available either through class skills or sinking power into crafting via feats), and finally there is gear that is only available via favors (which are quest rewards).
Major an Minor actions
Instead of attack and move actions, this system will be using major and minor actions. This is mostly a name difference, because things that resemble attacks can be used as minor actions.
For example, covering fire will be a minor action, but it won't actually have a chance to hit the enemy (unless the enemy is dumb enough to stand there while you shoot him instead of taking cover). A player gets one minor and one major action per round (though a major action can be used to do a second minor action).
Covering fire incidentally gives the enemy a choice between taking a minor action to take cover (this has to be done even if the target was in cover to begin with) or not taking cover, and giving the attacker a free shot. IE, you blow an action to take away the action of somebody else. Covering fire uses up 4 shots, and requires a weapon that can actually put out that many shots in a round (so lightning guns can't be used to put out covering fire, but bolt action rifles can).
For example, covering fire will be a minor action, but it won't actually have a chance to hit the enemy (unless the enemy is dumb enough to stand there while you shoot him instead of taking cover). A player gets one minor and one major action per round (though a major action can be used to do a second minor action).
Covering fire incidentally gives the enemy a choice between taking a minor action to take cover (this has to be done even if the target was in cover to begin with) or not taking cover, and giving the attacker a free shot. IE, you blow an action to take away the action of somebody else. Covering fire uses up 4 shots, and requires a weapon that can actually put out that many shots in a round (so lightning guns can't be used to put out covering fire, but bolt action rifles can).
Wednesday, April 11, 2012
First Post!
So this is going to be a development blog for a heavily modified d20 system. Thaumpunk genre (Think steampunk, but with overt magic and instead of victorian England you get totally not Victorian England stomps on elves and shit instead of brown people).
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