Thanks to my wife who thinks Oubliette is an awesome word. I think I will call it this and push my work forward.

 I think trying to be fancy with armor was messing things up and I'll just work towards easy compatibility rather than unique new features.

It is still an homage, rather than a clone. There will be differences, but I'll see how far I can go during playtests.


Current:
All Classes advance in to hit equally. (Like Basic D&D)
Warriors get Armor Penetration Bonus and access to better weaponry, and armor.

Warriors and Clerics  get a bonus the Block/Parry action

Rogues (and Martial Artists?) get  a bonus to the Dodge Ability.

Mages and Clerics get Spellcasting

Everyone gets special feats (not fixed chosen traits but special outside the normal combat interaction maneuvers.)

Warriors can wear any armor and use any weapon.

Clerics can use any armor, and can only use non-edged weapons.

Wizards can use Staff, dagger, sling, whip and can wear no armor (Anything else?)

Rogues can wear only light armors and use light or hand weapons.

Paths: Paths will have their features mentioned, and what classes they stack with.

Alignments: All 9, but I'll customize them a bit. Lawful Good does not mean "stupid", and Chaotic Evil does not mean "Can't work with others." It is selfish and cruel, but not necessarily "I hate the party."

Armor: Reduces Damage. Simplest option that isn't "harder to hit," and frankly allows me to do some neat things for warriors since they get armor penetration, allowing them to take on tougher things.


Should Warriors be able to specialize in a weapon?

Should Clerics be able to use weapons associated with their god/gods?

What of Rogues Backstab  (aka Vital Strike) should be a flat double damage? Numeric increase? (Example +1d6 a level)  It already allows armor piercing like the warrior but only from hiding.

Should I go with classic fantasy races, or spin the way I'd planned (

Immortal Magic Emperors created all the races intentionally or accidentally--Dwarves war engineered alchemical rune soldiers, Elves were assassin-brides/husbands, long lived, beautiful and deadly, Halflings are animal themed.)



Also, any weird or unusual monsters you want to kick in? Let me know.


Also, I'll show it again, this is Alath, the main playing continents for classic play (more Classic Fantasy/Anime Fantasy mixed tropes, than historical)

No feedback? No give it up and go home, let other people design clones/homages?

Quote from: Silverlion;557992No feedback? No give it up and go home, let other people design clones/homages?

There's really not enough for me to comment on, other than the mere mention of feats worries me. When I think "feat", I think "mechanical thing that often takes something anyone can try to do and boxes it off so only those who take the feat can try to do it."

Can you explain a bit more on armor penetration and how it works?

Interesting, really armor as deflection is one of my biggest beefs with the game.  I think you're heading into neo-clone territory and that's fine.  The uniform attack bonuses reflect 4e more than Basic.  In Expert fighters get bonuses faster it's just that nobody gets bonuses in Basic.

That's okay, my big beef with 4e is that they didn't have the balls to finish the job.  If they were throwing out the sacred cows they should have thrown out the sacred cows.  Sure it wouldn't be D&D anymore but I always get the feeling from it that the designers really wanted to design something that wasn't D&D and the management required the sacred cows stay in place.

I think I'd play up the unique and reinterpreted ideas.  Sales aren't really an issue and a good new take on old ideas can be fresh or nasty just depending on the implementation.  I think you should keep a consistant outlook though.  So if you reinterpret dwarves and elves you have to reinterpret orcs and dragons.

Cool map by the way.  Cool maps are always fun.

One oddball notion would be to have orcs spontaneously generated from mystical cabinets like they are in Gauntlet.  They're like creations in GURPS, things of magic without any humanity in them at all.

Quote from: RandallS;557994There's really not enough for me to comment on, other than the mere mention of feats worries me. When I think "feat", I think "mechanical thing that often takes something anyone can try to do and boxes it off so only those who take the feat can try to do it."

Nah, for me the "Feats" are more a short hand for classic folklore stuff--leaping over castles walls, doing amazing things. D&D messed that up for some people. In this case they will be class "flavored" but they can be done without having them. So long as your class fits the flavor--you get a bonus to the roll. The idea is to be flexible, more like free form powerstunts of some superhero games. (Do something cool and different, don't take something shoved into mechanical structure.)


In fact the game is supposed to be laid back homage to D&D, not an exact mechanical copy of any edition. Albeit some aspects I'm drawing from may seem more modern, most of them I go back to earlier editions for--example changing classes to get different abilities? Is based on the BD&D idea of Fighters becoming Paladins, Avengers, or Knights.


VGUNN:

Armor penetration is rather simple, nothing amazing. Armor provides a reduction in damage. In order to keep the system from having crazy damage values for D&D, rather than give the Fighter types a bonus to damage (outright), I decided to give them the ability to penetrate armor up to their level. It doesn't mean they can't do damage to the target if they're not high enough level. Merely that the damage they do is reduced.


Example: A Fifth Level Cleric fights a a white dragon with armor class 7, any attack he does is going to need to generate 8 or more points of damage to seriously hurt the dragon. (Without Divine Inspiration, or a Spell.)

He is carrying a Mace+1, it generates standard hand weapon damage of 1d8, this means he needs to roll a 7 on the damage dice just to get 1 HP damage to the dragon.

Now a warrior gets his level in Armor Penetration. A 5th level warrior with a Sword+1 only reduces his damage by 1 before applying the rest.


Either one of these characters may decide to perform a feat to put the dragon at a disadvantage and do more damage.

The cleric might use his inspiration roll, to snatch up a better weapon from the dragons frozen horde (for one shot, a God won't be mad if its once in a desperate situation that you throw that Spear of Lightning. Mind you this assumes the GM put one there, its not "narrative editing" just using the environment)

He might pray and roll his inspiration roll to boost his Bless spell, granting his now Bless self a bonus to damage as well as to hit against such an evil foe!


The warrior, may aim for a weak spot like the eye when open, or  leap up and grab its snout and wrestle it into falling on a stalagmite--allowing for a more dynamic and choice driven combat. Of course he has the options of better weapons, and his skill to find its weaknesses in the first place.

Sure the stalactite won't kill the dragon--its just another way to do damage (at a slightly) enhanced level (since the Dragon's Strength can be used against itself here.)

There is one other option that would work for armour bypass, that hybridizes armour 'bypass' and the armour-as-DR approach: that is to say, you roll for damage and apply it only if it beats the armour rating. In other words armour 3, damage 2 = no damage, armour 3, damage 4 = damage 4. I believe CHILL used this.
 
The armour/weapons/etc stuff by class in general works for me. Personally I don't like weapon specialization - I like proficiencies, but I don't like fighters being locked into a particular weapon since I don't like being the bastard sword guy and then getting a magical guisarme that makes my skills useless But I could see that some people might like specialization because they see a weapon as part of their concept, and don't want to quit being rapier guy because a magic longsword appeared.

Quote from: Silverlion;558025Nah, for me the "Feats" are more a short hand for classic folklore stuff--leaping over castles walls, doing amazing things. D&D messed that up for some people. In this case they will be class "flavored" but they can be done without having them. So long as your class fits the flavor--you get a bonus to the roll. The idea is to be flexible, more like free form powerstunts of some superhero games. (Do something cool and different, don't take something shoved into mechanical structure.)

Just to be on the safe side, please stress that characters can try these things even without the feat. I beliee that players wanting to be the only character able to do X because they took a feat are the main source of this problem. Had 3.x feat rules made it clear from the publication of the first rulebook that making someone very good at X via a feat was not the same thing as making everyone else unable to successfully do X at all, a lot of the issues I have with the very idea of feats would not exist.

QuoteIn fact the game is supposed to be laid back homage to D&D, not an exact mechanical copy of any edition. Albeit some aspects I'm drawing from may seem more modern, most of them I go back to earlier editions for--example changing classes to get different abilities? Is based on the BD&D idea of Fighters becoming Paladins, Avengers, or Knights.

Unlike many grognards, I don't have an issue with the very idea of changing the rules to Old School D&D, given that back in the day the vast majority of players still considered theior games D&D even though they were using all sorts of rules from Arduin, Warlock, The Dragon and White Dwarf articles, house rules, etc. There is a point when they become not old school D&D for me, but it isn't nearly as "soon" as it is for some old school voices on the Net.

QuoteShould Warriors be able to specialize in a weapon?

Should Clerics be able to use weapons associated with their god/gods?

What of Rogues Backstab (aka Vital Strike) should be a flat double damage? Numeric increase? (Example +1d6 a level) It already allows armor piercing like the warrior but only from hiding.

Should I go with classic fantasy races, or spin the way I'd planned (

Immortal Magic Emperors created all the races intentionally or accidentally--Dwarves war engineered alchemical rune soldiers, Elves were assassin-brides/husbands, long lived, beautiful and deadly, Halflings are animal themed.)

1. Yes
2. Yes
3. Not sure
4. Keep with your idea and see if it works before going traditional

What about multiclassing? Or dualclassing? Level limits are they hardcapped or are there ways around it like 2e?

Quote from: Marleycat;5584401. Yes
What about multiclassing? Or dualclassing? Level limits are they hardcapped or are there ways around it like 2e?

The base game is that anyone and everyone can switch class when they go up a level. They get more benefit by staying on the same "path" (Martial, Magic, Divine, Trickery) than switching paths. However, a new path opens up more options, just not cumulative--at least until you switch to a class which has hybrid paths.

A 3rd level PC may have Fighter/Fighter/Cleric, at 4th level he can stack another level of any of those classes, or switch to a new one. He however may choose to become a Paladin (which requires F2, C1) which now allows him to add his Paladin class to everything. Making him a Fighter 3, Cleric 1, and providing him with its own featured "feats"

I had a friend run through character generation, statting himself an Elf Warrior with bow and in his words "a poncy rapier."  The test of the game was just primarily combat.

He engaged three goblins--two rank and file and one leader (who had better weapons and armor.)

It worked very well, and gave the player a lot of options. He used Feats: Combat Maneuvers from the warrior class to get the jump in initiative, and pull himself up on an overhanging tree branch to give himself room to shoot his bow.

He took some damage from a throw dagger, despite the two spear-throwers missing completely, the leader DID hit. His armor cut the damage in half though and kept him from serious harm.

He then used his position after the leader went down to intimidate them (Warrior feat again.) And caused them to check morale. The other two goblins ran for it.

Smooth, and quick. Took longer to character generate than I'd like but admittedly this was over chat, and most of it was his pausing to do whatever he was doing at his end.

I think I'll need to be clear on what each Feat category can do, and maybe trim a few things off the Dex stat.

Since he wants to use his Dex with his light weapon (poncy rapier), I imagine he'll want to take a Rogue level which lets you swap STR for DEX on hand and light weaponry.

It flowed really well, and allowed more flexibility by allowing the PC to have active defenses.

I need to level up the character a bit and put him against something with a lot of options.