Creating this thread on request of Marley.

I've a number of issues with 3rd edition but I'm not going to waste this thread with those issues, or any issues I have with any edition. I'm just going to discuss the fantasy Heartbreaker that's still in its early stages of development. However its late right now so I'm going to just slap down a few of the building blocks before heading off to bed.

1) The game, both mechanics and the eventual setting, is predicated around the idea that "magic" is as fundamental to the make-up of the universe as "physics". Given that everything a person does no matter how mundane or complicated is as intertwined with "Magic" as everything that happens in our reality is predicated on "physics".

2) The more a person breaks physics or the larger the impact a given person has on the world means that they are, in one shape or another, gifted with magical powers. It does not matter what you refer to this power as (Chi, spells, power of personality, aura, your mom) it all interacts with the world at large and anybody who is a mover and shaker probably has some amount command of this force. Now while I am referring to it as magic here it is really "soul energy" and to the characters in my game "magic" will be a very distinct thing from the normal stuff you can do with this "soul energy". In order to keep things from being too confusing I'm going to refer this energy as Mana.

3) "Spells" such as they are follow a few distinct guidelines to keep them from being the end all be all in the game I'm crafting while still keeping with their traditional flavor.

A) Spells are garnered through what amounts to feats. Spells are about as hard to learn as a special sword technique. This keeps spells and sword techniques from being separated and allows players to choose to be martial or mystical in practice.

B) Spells do not replace skills. All out of combat (that is social, navigational, etc) abilities and special movements are covered with skills and spells can never replace them. Spells in fact force you to use the relevant skill in various fashions to make them work. This keeps people who use spells from kicking people who invest in skills in the nuts. What's more Spells that directly relate to skills only give you more options or ways you can use skills you already have. IE Invisibility allows you to hide when you have no covered. Other spells that out do other options (such as teleporting) come at higher action costs. IE Teleporting a short distance is better than moving there. Thus it has a higher action cost than just moving there.

C) Some magical things that are strictly better than other things do need to be held onto in order to hold to certain genre expectations. As such new and very restrictive limits are put in place to insure that nothing gets too ahead of in the game. Things like Summoning, Long term Mind Control, Teleporting long distances, divining things from various gods, magic item crafting, long distance scrying, traveling to different planes, etc are relegated to rituals and operate in such a way that the potential abuses are practically negligible.

4) Skills still exist and they give you a basic set of abilities expected to come with them.By my last count there are 27 skills (5 craft skills and 5 knowledge skills counted individually). The skill system in general has been changed completely.

A) Skills give certain distinct abilities that are general and broad.

B) Skills don't work on skill points but instead go up automatically like Base Attack Bonus. You pay into buying a certain tiers instead of paying individual skill points.

C) All classes, races, etc get the same number of skills. Skill allotment is not adjusted by anything other than level. Base Attack Bonus (called accuracy bonus now), combat proficiency, and casting proficiency are now all skills. (for non casters casting proficiency gives you access to rituals and magic item crafting).

5) Bonuses are all limited. You are only able to apply 5 bonuses to any rolls.  Attribute Bonus, Skill bonus, and up to three other modifiers may be added to any roll, check, and/or total. There is no limit to the penalties.

Well that's all I got for now so I'm gonna leave this here for now and add a bit more later.

Some interesting stuff I like spells as skills like GURPS and Fantasy Craft. So how does the feat thing work for spells? No lists/levels like traditional Dnd?

Quote from: Marleycat;558216Some interesting stuff I like spells as skills like GURPS and Fantasy Craft. So how does the feat thing work for spells? No lists/levels like traditional Dnd?

There are only 4 levels of spells. Higher level spells require you to have a number of the building spells to acquire. For example "Fire" is a basic spell. To get "Rocket", a third level spell, you need Fire and either "warp" or "force".

Getting the feat for a spell works as any other spell acquisition.

List wise there are still schools covered by the various fields of knowledge (of which there are 5 each with 4 basic spells under them). It gets just a tad more complicated from there but that's the basics. You do not need the knowledge skill to acquire spells. You can learn spells without knowing the specifics of how they work but any attempt to dispel/counter your spells automatically  succeed without you getting a roll.

So because I have to stay up for the night I can add a bit more here. Let's talk classes. I'm planning on having a base of 12 but am having difficulty choosing what the last class is going to be. There are 3 more in the making that are Campaign (Steam Punk) specific and will be waiting.

All the lasses have various class specific abilities that hep distinguish them from one another. I attempted to design the classes in a fashion that would promote players to fight in a particular fashion with each. The players of course are welcome to find ways to do as they wish however, I'm not married to the idea of forcing people to conform.

Examples include: The Barbarian who primarily gets a strength booster to start and various abilities that help him close distance with enemies and keep them close.

The Champion who gains a bunch of abilities that allow him to take more damage and enable him to take damage in place of allies.He also has a number of abilities that make it punishing for enemies to ignore him.

The Tactician who gains a bunch of abilities that allow him to use the resources of other team members to greater, and more directed, effect. For him coordinating is key though he can hold his own if forced to.

The Mage who gets a lot of Mana to power his abilities right off the bat. However his mana stores are limited so strategic use and resource management are key. He otherwise can use "spells" in ways no other class can.

And those are just a few of the examples. As you can see a lot of time was spent making combat grade abilities for each of the classes. This was intentional as there are a host of class specific sub abilities and skill abilities that I want to handle most non combat stuff including locating, navigating, and traveling.

I'm also building a framework on how contacts, land, organizations, and large buildings and vehicles are acquired and managed. Since I'm still hammering out the math in other areas of the game all I have is a general outline for that part of it.I'm also building this section to codify exactly how much your GM can "mess" with your stuff.

That's all for tonight though.

[note that I'll leave any differences over in the other thread and try to be constructive here].
 
The skill tiers thing sounds quite interesting - fantasy craft esque? And does applying a maximum of five modifiers replace the traditional 'stacking' system (so that modifier types needn't be assigned?) or supplement it? Interesting.
 
Curious as to how you're doing the 'soul energy' idea as well - I've seen a number of systems that had some sort of 'power' attribute for characters ? Or is it a purely level-dependent rating? If its a single thing, would a multi-class character (if there is such a thing) power all their abilities from the same energy 'pool'?

Not my cup of tea I fear.

Its designed backwards from the way i work.

I do  - in this world there would be people like this how would they play.

This does - I need classes that work like this to manipulate the different elements of the design space how woudl they fit into the game world.

Good luck with it though there can never be too many games.

Quote from: jibbajibba;558396Not my cup of tea I fear.
 
Its designed backwards from the way i work.
 
I do - in this world there would be people like this how would they play.
 
This does - I need classes that work like this to manipulate the different elements of the design space how woudl they fit into the game world.
 
Good luck with it though there can never be too many games.

True; I'm trying to imagine what a world with these classes in it would look like, where everyone has exceptional powers, and getting maybe a sort of Sheri S. Tepper vibe (not that I've actually read all of those).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_True_Game

I can't help noticing that you put in a class whose job is even more literally to be a punching bag than any previous edition of D&D ever.

Or do I misunderstand a class who's defining power it taking damage in place of allies?

Quote from: MGuy;5580835) Bonuses are all limited. You are only able to apply 5 bonuses to any rolls.  Attribute Bonus, Skill bonus, and up to three other modifiers may be added to any roll, check, and/or total. There is no limit to the penalties.

This is going to end up being a problem in play.

Quote from: Bloody Stupid Johnson;558395[note that I'll leave any differences over in the other thread and try to be constructive here].
 
The skill tiers thing sounds quite interesting - fantasy craft esque? And does applying a maximum of five modifiers replace the traditional 'stacking' system (so that modifier types needn't be assigned?) or supplement it? Interesting.
 
Curious as to how you're doing the 'soul energy' idea as well - I've seen a number of systems that had some sort of 'power' attribute for characters ? Or is it a purely level-dependent rating? If its a single thing, would a multi-class character (if there is such a thing) power all their abilities from the same energy 'pool'?

Supplement. Bonuses of the same type won't stack. I'm going to be very hard on the numbers so that designing the rest will be easier. If I can keep the numbers under control I won't have to worry about people finding ways to screw them.

The "soul energy" thing is going to be in both the fluff and the mechanics. All classes will have access to a mix of mana based and non mana based abilities. The amount of "Mana" they have can use in a given turn will be uniform across the entire system such that all classes/creatures/things at the same level can only use up to a fixed maximum amount on any given action at a given level. There will be absolutely NO abilities that break this so there won't be any shenanigans to try to get around it.

Right now all classes/creatures/things use Mana. There's a standard pool that everything has. The difference between them being whether or not they have extra pools (A'la Mage) or if they can just generate it quickly after use (Barbarian).

Quote from: jibbajibba;558396Not my cup of tea I fear.

Its designed backwards from the way i work.

I do  - in this world there would be people like this how would they play.

This does - I need classes that work like this to manipulate the different elements of the design space how woudl they fit into the game world.

Good luck with it though there can never be too many games.

Kind of. I'm thinking first of role/theme protection when doing classes. I want classes to be a general enough that one class can fit a bunch of archetypes but "protected" enough such that they "feel" different then when you play other classes. I'm not sure how I would be able to design a class based system for a generic fantasy game by starting in any other fashion.

Quote from: Spike;558408I can't help noticing that you put in a class whose job is even more literally to be a punching bag than any previous edition of D&D ever.

Or do I misunderstand a class who's defining power it taking damage in place of allies?

Nope. You are not mistaking at all. The Champion's job on the battlefield is primarily to defend others. He can, of course, hold his own when there's nothing to defend but I wanted to make a character class who could actually perform the "defender" role at all. I wanted to make classes that feel and play different so having a class play defense shenanigans fits into that.

Quote from: StormBringer;558462This is going to end up being a problem in play.

Details please.

Quote from: MGuy;558579Details please.

Now game design isn't my thing....

Quote5) Bonuses are all limited. You are only able to apply 5 bonuses to any rolls. Attribute Bonus, Skill bonus, and up to three other modifiers may be added to any roll, check, and/or total. There is no limit to the penalties.

But this can get way out of balance so much so that players will either bonus hunt like crazy or be too petrified to try anything with a risk.

Quote from: Marleycat;558581Now game design isn't my thing....But this can get way out of balance so much so that players will either bonus hunt like crazy or be too petrified to try anything with a risk.

People already bonus hunt. That's how you get Cleric Archer builds and other shit from CharOp boards. With this I harshly limit the amount of bonuses they can accrue no matter how hard they hunt for them.

I'm afraid I don't know what you mean when you say they will refrain from trying anything risky.