I'm still not 100% clear on how the spell system is supposed to work.  How many spells do you expect a typical wizard to have? Will there be other types of magic or practicioners? Are the spells especially strong like actual Vancian with other acquisition avenues therein because of the extreme limits?  If so, are wizards far more well rounded because of this?

Quote from: Spike;559530Reading comprehension fail.

Indeed. I'm glad you warned me you were about to practice that otherwise I'd've taken what you said right after this  too seriously.

QuoteIf you tell a player that his character can take "damage" for another PC it means something very specific, and very different from taking an "Attack".

If I tell someone who doesn't know shit about the fine difference between targeting, attacking, and damage, the order they should occur in, and why it would matter they will stare at me funny. Imagine for a second that I've described this system to people before. Imagine that thus far you are the only one who took it that way without first asking for clarification. What you don't have to imagine, if you were to go back, is the place where I corrected you on your presumption. The fact that you have since then used half of your posts up telling me that yes, you indeed got it wrong and how if it worked the way you thought it would, it would be bad, is beneath my concern because you indeed got it wrong.

QuoteThat you can't grasp this is very sad.  I'm not telling you how to make the Champion work, because I don't actually care for the class at all. I AM telling you that you need to describe it accurately so people actually understand how the class works.

Easy analogy that you'll misunderstand: Does a fireball do 5d6 attack?  No, and if you tell people it does they're gonna be confused.

I understand you got it wrong. I understand that you got confuzzled and didn't know how to ask for clarification. I have taught you how to ask questions. Don't waste this gift.

 

QuoteIn short, I was explaining a design problem to you.  You know, sort of like you asked for by making this thread?

I wouldn't dare ask a design question on this board after the Fighter v Wizards thread. I sure as hell wouldn't come to you specifically for advice because you seem to like to throw around your own personal tastes into the conversation AND waste my time on a point that I already told you you got wrong. You have, since first posting in this thread told me you don't like the idea of tanking, misinterpreted what I wrote and spent paragraphs reaffirming the fact that you misunderstood it then you go on and tell me how your misinterpretation wouldn't work. You haven't given any "design" advice at all other than telling me you, as a player, hate doing math.

QuoteSince you haven't posted the Champion's write up, or your wizard write up, I can't look over the numbers. In your example the wizard's dodge is better.

Because I haven't gone into the specifics for the game. I'm still writing it up and it isn't even ready for ALPHA testing. It takes time and energy to design a game, I'm not getting paid to do it, and its not a priority task. What I wrote up are outlines of my design process. And in the sample I wrote up the Mage's dodge "total" is higher than the Champions but his dodge bonus is not. If the Champion weren't being weighed down by his armor he would have the higher dodge total. Its lower because heavy armor slows you down.

QuoteAn artificial cap on the number of different sources of bonuses... greater than the number of potential bonus sources IS fiddly. You have added a mechanism on top of the existing bonus/penalty mechanism, which catagorically and objectively makes the system more complex.

The bonus cap is lower than the total number of potential bonuses. I've named at LEAST 6 (attribute + Skill + equipment + situation + Magic + mundane). I have added a mechanism TO the game but I took a lot of the bonus types OUT of the game. Morale, enhancement, armor, natural armor, untyped, inherent, circumstance, competence, alchemical, deflection, dodge, luck, profane, racial, aren't even all of them. So I reduced all of that to so far 6, and yet my system is MORE fiddly than that?

Quote from: MGuy;559457I intend to do just that. As I mentioned before situation specific bonuses (like flanking and having higher ground) are all the same type of bonus so you only use the highest one of those and add that in. There'll be a morale bonus, a magic bonus (from magic), and a mundane (from mundane things like having superior equipment) bonus. I can't really think of any other bonus types that I've made outside those four that aren't the generic Attribute, Skill, and Equipment. I make the rule that there can only be 5 that apply just in case, as I develop the game, I end up deciding that there are more.

Magic bonuses I can sort of see, but mundane is a bit weird. Where would that apply when equipment, situation, etc. do not? If it's just nonmagic class abilities, it might be better to call it a competence bonus or something more specific.

How prominent are morale bonuses going to be? Is there going to be an NPC morale system, or is it just going to be a specific bonus type?

Quote from: Marleycat;559596I'm still not 100% clear on how the spell system is supposed to work.  How many spells do you expect a typical wizard to have? Will there be other types of magic or practicioners? Are the spells especially strong like actual Vancian with other acquisition avenues therein because of the extreme limits?  If so, are wizards far more well rounded because of this?

Depends on what level of Mage he is.

Everyone can practice "magic". There is no "magic" specific class. The mage would be the closest to that since all of his actual class abilities either allow him to get spells, metamagic feats, or allow him to use spells in a manner no other class covers.

Spells are kept under a tight reign. As mentioned before spells that everyone needs (like teleport, raise dead, plane shifting) are thematic and necessary for the game so they are rituals instead. Spells otherwise don't make you any more combatively powerful then any other class. Spells merely allow you to do very specific things with reality. They are more versatile than most of the more martial abilities (something that's seemingly impossible to avoid) but they don't do anything that would allow someone who concentrates on them to out do someone who chooses not to.

I still haven't started testing as of yet. The outlook I had on changing the spells was to keep the thematic ones, reduce overlap as much as feasibly possible, make it so that no one spell completely obviates the need for skills. What's more is acquisition of them is slower by virtue of having to rely on feats instead of getting a set per level. This is also helped by the necessity of Mana to power them, the cap on Mana usage per action, and the fact tat to change the dimensions/effects of the spells also require more feats. The Mage class has the upper hand in that they can acquire spells via class ability (as a bonus feat). What's more is you don't have to simply be a squishy caster that casts from the back. You can be a frontline fighting mage wwith certain feat combinations.

Quote from: beejazz;559628Magic bonuses I can sort of see, but mundane is a bit weird. Where would that apply when equipment, situation, etc. do not? If it's just nonmagic class abilities, it might be better to call it a competence bonus or something more specific.

How prominent are morale bonuses going to be? Is there going to be an NPC morale system, or is it just going to be a specific bonus type?

Alchemical boosters, drug boosties, abilities that would give a competence bonus, etc all would fall under "mundane".

Quote from: beejazz;559628How prominent are morale bonuses going to be? Is there going to be an NPC morale system, or is it just going to be a specific bonus type?

This question is important and I don't know yet. I'm thinking about digging into 2e for the DM to have a special "encounter roll" that might shift the NPCs effectiveness slightly up or down. Perhaps giving them tags like "exhausted" or "filled with anger" or some other set of circumstances that might afford them bonuses right from the start. That's just to mix things up though and isn't necessary. It was an interesting idea someone from the Den thought up but right now I am concentrating on just getting the framework finished.

So now more.

HP and SHP: HP in my game specifically represents critical damage avoidance. Any time a character loses HP it means they got nicked, cut, scraped, or somehow otherwise injured but in a not so life threatening or debilitating way. Now in the first iteration of HP I wanted to do something that made losing HP costly such that being low on hp was worse than when you were at full performance wise. I ended up nixxing the idea to save time and ease up on the difficulty level that would cause on the game. Fluff wise I reason that characters subconsciously twist fate such that they are allowed to survive more dangerous situations. It can alternately be reasoned that they're Mana infused body because tougher as they accrue more power. Both work actually.

Right now you have your hit points and your stock hit points.

Hit points, as I said, represent dodging critical blows. When you run out of HP you start taking Con Damage for every hit. At low levels this is dangerous, at higher levels this will be straight up fatal. This is because your hp, and thus damage, scales in my game and after a certain point you can expect the same debilitating blow that would've caused 6 damage to your con to do over 20. This is intended as I believe that as you get higher level and more hp that the risk factor, and thus the difficult of the game, should grow. Hp scales slowly (1HP per level after the first) though so the numbers involved won't be getting up into the 20s or higher unless you're fighting something well below your level (get to why that happens later) or you are at the end game (near level 20).

Now you also have Stock Hit Points. This is actually inspired from 4e's healing surges. The idea that everyone should be able to recover HP struck me as something that is actually necessary. However 4E took it several steps too far by having Healing Surges heal "too much" and/or having abilities that straight up bypassed healing surges to heal someone infinitely. So, in order to reduce 15 minute workdays and prevent infinite or over abundant healing I have this system instead. Characters get a pile of Stock HP. Since HP doesn't represent actual wounds recovering it won't damage people's verisimilitude and can be explained as just channeling more mojo. Stock HP is a pile of unused HP that players have to channel in order to benefit from. Anytime a character's damage is healed they take an equal amount of SHP and turn it into HP. So if the Barbarian uses his "vigor" ability to heal 2 HP he loses to SHP.  By default everyone has the ability to slowly channel SHP into HP at a rate of about 1 hp per minute of rest. Abilities that allow quicker healing are faster but still use SHP so that people who want to play healer in battle can still opt to do so. This also promotes careful resource management. Your SHP total will, by default, be equal to your max HP.

Moving on: Attacks will be a bit more complicated than in 3rd I'm afraid. Now I've made this change knowing that it will slow things down because division is a bit tricky but I wanted there to be a number of ways to up damage outside of strength and I wanted to add some extra swinginess to damage output. Before I begin I want to say "to hit" is determined by "dexterity" or "wisdom" instead of strength.

First there is the attack roll. Most attacks go against Dodge. Regularly a person just have the "take 10 apply bonuses" that they have to roll against. Opposition can choose, however, to use an active defense by eating up an Attack of Opportunity. Active defense allows you to roll your defense and only take the result if its higher than 10 otherwise you use 10. Active defense is important for using other defensive abilities but I won't get into that. In either case you take the difference between your roll and the target's Dodge (whether the difference is positive or negative) and divide it by 2 rounding down. The result is the precision damage you're going to be dealing. So then comes damage. You roll damage whether or not you overcame the target's dodge. You then apply all your regular bonuses including precision (again whether positive or negative) and you come up with a damage total.

Now missing is still missing so if you don't overcome the target's dodge bonus any "on hit" effects you would get (as a number of attack based abilities would require) don't work if you don't hit. Now if you miss you may still drain a target's HP. However, you cannot do Con damage if you missed the attack.

Now this is a little more complicated in that it involved division however its a springboard to make other plans work such as grappling. A grappler should be able to easily over power smaller creatures but faster creatures should be harder to get a good hold of. So to allow this to happen when you grab someone you still make an attack roll. You then can only make the grapple if you hit. If you miss the grapple is canceled. If you "it" you make an opposed fortitude roll (fortitude being modified by "strength' or "constitution"). This allows slippery characters to evade grapples while putting them in a disastrous situation if they get caught.

This pretty much applies to all the other combat maneuvers such as bullrushing, tripping, and sundering in that they are "on hit" effects.

Quote from: MGuy;559635Alchemical boosters, drug boosties, abilities that would give a competence bonus, etc all would fall under "mundane".

Okay. I guess I can kind of see lumping alchemical bonuses and competence bonuses together, esp. if you want to keep the numbers down.

Additionally: Alchemy provides mundane bonuses, so I take it it's something non-magic classes can do as well as mages. I typically approve of an approach like this.

Quote from: MGuy;559638This question is important and I don't know yet. I'm thinking about digging into 2e for the DM to have a special "encounter roll" that might shift the NPCs effectiveness slightly up or down. Perhaps giving them tags like "exhausted" or "filled with anger" or some other set of circumstances that might afford them bonuses right from the start. That's just to mix things up though and isn't necessary. It was an interesting idea someone from the Den thought up but right now I am concentrating on just getting the framework finished.

Interesting... so this is like a combat relevant NPC attitudes bit?

I was thinking more of flight and surrender conditions that might apply to either side (with PCs' henchmen and all too).

Quote from: MGuyOther 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.

Since you're still working on framework, I figured I'd check back in the OP. This one looks weird to me. Movement (by itself) is a free ability.

I figure with spells and such, there's not just the action cost. There's also the opportunity cost of the spell/feat slot. If it takes a double move to get the same deal as a move action, it might really reduce the value of that short range teleportation. It's pretty much only useful for bypassing impassable obstacles (and the range of what qualifies as impassible will shrink with skills if they scale indefinitely... at least normally).

And long range teleportation negates a multiday trip. It's main advantage is the time advantage (well... besides things like money and risk). So balancing it against the mundane option on the basis of time seems off somehow.

In D&D there's the Vancian system for managing resources so you have a finite number of times you can do this. For myself, I built a stance/aura economy instead. Have you considered building a new finite resource so you can limit things without negating their use?

QuoteC) 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.

You partially address all this here. I guess I'm just saying that the opportunity cost and ritual time might still leave long term teleports the only way to travel, if these are the only limits. Have you considered money on this one? Teleportation would be faster, but cost more (and would especially cost more than a trip with an accompanying hunter, who could obtain food more cheaply).

What other balancers might you use?

QuoteB) 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.

I tend to like auto-advancement. What are tiers in this context?

QuoteC) 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).

Another common houserule, but one I tend to like.

I take it there are no spell prereqs on magic crafting if non casters can use it?

Are rituals learned in the 2e sense (find em and put em in your spellbook), learned in the feat slots, or just something where you can try everything rituals can do? Are there checks, and are the consequences of failure wasted time, or more than that?

_____________

Sorry if I missed somewhere you already answered something. This thread's been heavy on the textwalling and multiquoting.

Quote from: MGuy;559654So now more.

HP and SHP: HP in my game specifically represents critical damage avoidance. Any time a character loses HP it means they got nicked, cut, scraped, or somehow otherwise injured but in a not so life threatening or debilitating way. Now in the first iteration of HP I wanted to do something that made losing HP costly such that being low on hp was worse than when you were at full performance wise. I ended up nixxing the idea to save time and ease up on the difficulty level that would cause on the game. Fluff wise I reason that characters subconsciously twist fate such that they are allowed to survive more dangerous situations. It can alternately be reasoned that they're Mana infused body because tougher as they accrue more power. Both work actually.

Right now you have your hit points and your stock hit points.

Hit points, as I said, represent dodging critical blows. When you run out of HP you start taking Con Damage for every hit. At low levels this is dangerous, at higher levels this will be straight up fatal. This is because your hp, and thus damage, scales in my game and after a certain point you can expect the same debilitating blow that would've caused 6 damage to your con to do over 20. This is intended as I believe that as you get higher level and more hp that the risk factor, and thus the difficult of the game, should grow. Hp scales slowly (1HP per level after the first) though so the numbers involved won't be getting up into the 20s or higher unless you're fighting something well below your level (get to why that happens later) or you are at the end game (near level 20).

Now you also have Stock Hit Points. This is actually inspired from 4e's healing surges. The idea that everyone should be able to recover HP struck me as something that is actually necessary. However 4E took it several steps too far by having Healing Surges heal "too much" and/or having abilities that straight up bypassed healing surges to heal someone infinitely. So, in order to reduce 15 minute workdays and prevent infinite or over abundant healing I have this system instead. Characters get a pile of Stock HP. Since HP doesn't represent actual wounds recovering it won't damage people's verisimilitude and can be explained as just channeling more mojo. Stock HP is a pile of unused HP that players have to channel in order to benefit from. Anytime a character's damage is healed they take an equal amount of SHP and turn it into HP. So if the Barbarian uses his "vigor" ability to heal 2 HP he loses to SHP.  By default everyone has the ability to slowly channel SHP into HP at a rate of about 1 hp per minute of rest. Abilities that allow quicker healing are faster but still use SHP so that people who want to play healer in battle can still opt to do so. This also promotes careful resource management. Your SHP total will, by default, be equal to your max HP.

SHP sounds pretty similar to Reserve Points from 3.5's Unearthed Arcana. Not that that's a bad thing, they were a fun rule to go with reduced hp totals or increased damage. But if you haven't checked that one out yet you probably should.

QuoteFirst there is the attack roll. Most attacks go against Dodge. Regularly a person just have the "take 10 apply bonuses" that they have to roll against. Opposition can choose, however, to use an active defense by eating up an Attack of Opportunity. Active defense allows you to roll your defense and only take the result if its higher than 10 otherwise you use 10. Active defense is important for using other defensive abilities but I won't get into that. In either case you take the difference between your roll and the target's Dodge (whether the difference is positive or negative) and divide it by 2 rounding down. The result is the precision damage you're going to be dealing. So then comes damage. You roll damage whether or not you overcame the target's dodge. You then apply all your regular bonuses including precision (again whether positive or negative) and you come up with a damage total.

The spending of AoOs to dodge is similar to what I ended up going with. Except in my case they are Reactions, and the trade down rule lets you forgo actions to get more of them. Additionally, there's a harsh penalty for not dodging in my system. Basically you use your modifiers (in my case dex mod and level) with no roll.

Not saying this is what you should go with or anything, but will maybe-a-bonus-maybe-nothing be worth the AoO slot? I mean, maybe, since AoOs are maybe-free-attacks-maybe-nothing. But it still just looks weird on paper, you know?

Precision damage is likewise a bit odd. Why not just scale damage bonuses at a rate that's more or less acceptable?

QuoteNow this is a little more complicated in that it involved division however its a springboard to make other plans work such as grappling. A grappler should be able to easily over power smaller creatures but faster creatures should be harder to get a good hold of. So to allow this to happen when you grab someone you still make an attack roll. You then can only make the grapple if you hit. If you miss the grapple is canceled. If you "it" you make an opposed fortitude roll (fortitude being modified by "strength' or "constitution"). This allows slippery characters to evade grapples while putting them in a disastrous situation if they get caught.

Rolling twice sort of lowers the odds of grappling working. What if grabbing and pinning were distinguished from each other? So grabbing still does something (including movement prevention, unless you were dumb and grabbed a giant or something) and the danger of pinning is part of what freaks out the little ones.

Quote from: beejazz;559660Interesting... so this is like a combat relevant NPC attitudes bit?

I was thinking more of flight and surrender conditions that might apply to either side (with PCs' henchmen and all too).

I'm going to have it so NPCs are easier to scare off in general but I'm not going to create a morale system for them. I pondered the possibility of making one but it becomes a bit too much to track in practice. More often than not my players chase NPC enemies down or don't give them a chance for surrender so there is no compelling reason for me to make such a thing.

QuoteSince you're still working on framework, I figured I'd check back in the OP. This one looks weird to me. Movement (by itself) is a free ability.

I figure with spells and such, there's not just the action cost. There's also the opportunity cost of the spell/feat slot. If it takes a double move to get the same deal as a move action, it might really reduce the value of that short range teleportation. It's pretty much only useful for bypassing impassable obstacles (and the range of what qualifies as impassible will shrink with skills if they scale indefinitely... at least normally).

I will make away to reduce action cost but the standard casting time for standard spells in my system is a standard action. However teleporting has several benefits beyond just passing pit traps. It also gets you out of grapples, from underwater, etc so I tend to value it a bit higher than movement. Regularly movement does have an action cost (a move action). I don't do spell slots though so that isn't a concern. It does cost a feat but the versatility of porting around is something I believe is well worth that expenditure.

QuoteHave you considered building a new finite resource so you can limit things without negating their use?

Mana. I do not however intend to limit the use of any ability to a number of times per day. I've never liked the "per day" scheme a lot of abilities come with so I intentionally have avoided making any of that.

QuoteI take it there are no spell prereqs on magic crafting if non casters can use it?

Magic item crafting and usage is a lot more limited than it is in DnD. I don't like "Ironman" Fighters so magic items are not something that's required to get ahead. Even if you have them the uses of magic items are purely horizontal, in that they only give you more options. As for magic item crafting prereqs there is the requirement that you have the item crafter ability which requires you too have oth the necessary craft skill and a casting proficiency of the appropriate level. (Both merely require investment in skills). From there things get a bit more complicated but I'll cover that in another post.

QuoteAre rituals learned in the 2e sense (find em and put em in your spellbook), learned in the feat slots, or just something where you can try everything rituals can do? Are there checks, and are the consequences of failure wasted time, or more than that?

I like the "find'em and get'em mixed with you getting some for free by opening up the option. Certain rituals (like summoning) require a specific "thing". Namely the correct *knowledge" skill. There are a mix of minor rituals (rites) that give you minor situation specific bonuses or outcomes (like burial rites, marriage rites, rites of passage, etc) and others are more costly like Long Range teleportation, atonement (if this even makes the cut), interplanar travel travel and the like. I can't think of any rituals that have a chance of failure. Essentially the bigger the effect the more costly/longer the rituals.

Long range teleportation is kept from  mitigating trips at all. Long range teleportation works on a portal system which means you have to go to the place you want to teleport to AND go to the place you want to teleport from and set up the gateways on both ends. This allows you to still have your journey without teleport screwing your adventures over and you cans till do the mystical gateway trope that people like.

Quote from: beejazz;559665SHP sounds pretty similar to Reserve Points from 3.5's Unearthed Arcana. Not that that's a bad thing, they were a fun rule to go with reduced hp totals or increased damage. But if you haven't checked that one out yet you probably should.

That's actually where I went to bring it in. at first I had something that was much closer to healing surges but I took that as inspiration and changed it up a bit.

QuoteThe spending of AoOs to dodge is similar to what I ended up going with. Except in my case they are Reactions, and the trade down rule lets you forgo actions to get more of them. Additionally, there's a harsh penalty for not dodging in my system. Basically you use your modifiers (in my case dex mod and level) with no roll.

Not saying this is what you should go with or anything, but will maybe-a-bonus-maybe-nothing be worth the AoO slot? I mean, maybe, since AoOs are maybe-free-attacks-maybe-nothing. But it still just looks weird on paper, you know?

The thing is, I expect people to use their AoOs on actual attacks and a significant portion of abilities require the use of an AoO. I might do the trade down thing in order to give people more AoOs but I'm not committed to that idea as it requires just a bit more bookkeeping on the player's part. The "maybe a bonus/maybe not paradigm is important in that I want people to be engaged. I haven't gotten to how defense works in more depth so I haven't explained that things like fighting defensively and full defense are still in the game and allow your active defense roll to be higher, thus practically guaranteeing a bonus. There are also swathes of defense focused abilities (parrying, reflecting, catching, etc) that will make Active Defense a reasonable option.

QuotePrecision damage is likewise a bit odd. Why not just scale damage bonuses at a rate that's more or less acceptable?

It allows me to play around with damage totals in a not so direct way. It means high dexterity fighters don't have to trade off as much damage for choosing not to be high strength and allows for more balanced builds.

QuoteRolling twice sort of lowers the odds of grappling working. What if grabbing and pinning were distinguished from each other? So grabbing still does something (including movement prevention, unless you were dumb and grabbed a giant or something) and the danger of pinning is part of what freaks out the little ones.

Grabbing is a different monster than attacking. Its an all or nothing trade off because once you get into a grapple the grapple victim's turn is lost. They either have to struggle to get out of it (takes up their turn) or attempt to do something while continuing to suffer from the grappling. Being grappled makes you unable to use larger than bite sized weapons, makes casting a pain in the ass and unlikely to happen, and runs the danger of only getting worse from there. Because of the dangers presented by grappling I want to make grappling a fair but not overpowering option. So I upped the chances that it just doesn't work. Usually people who want to have grappling be a "thing" will get a feat that allows them to, after being able to hit the target, have a definite advantage in succeeding in the opposed fortitude roll and sticking the grapple.

Edit: Grapple and pin are distinguished in that to pin an opponent you have to grab them first. Pinning makes things extra bad for the grapple victim. Once pinned all they can do is use up a turn unpinning themselves and even then they'd be prone afterward.

Quote from: MGuyI'm going to have it so NPCs are easier to scare off in general but I'm not going to create a morale system for them. I pondered the possibility of making one but it becomes a bit too much to track in practice. More often than not my players chase NPC enemies down or don't give them a chance for surrender so there is no compelling reason for me to make such a thing.

Mostly just curious about the details. You go on and make the game that suits how you play.

I find part of that attitude (the one that doesn't allow flight or surrender) comes from the dungeon environment and fear of retaliation. Flight and surrender are more common in my games because they lean towards in-town and mystery based fare. Surrender can mean interrogation, and flight means you don't have to waste time and resources on fighting.

QuoteI will make away to reduce action cost but the standard casting time for standard spells in my system is a standard action. However teleporting has several benefits beyond just passing pit traps. It also gets you out of grapples, from underwater, etc so I tend to value it a bit higher than movement. Regularly movement does have an action cost (a move action). I don't do spell slots though so that isn't a concern. It does cost a feat but the versatility of porting around is something I believe is well worth that expenditure.

Standard seems fair enough for that sort of thing.

QuoteMana. I do not however intend to limit the use of any ability to a number of times per day. I've never liked the "per day" scheme a lot of abilities come with so I intentionally have avoided making any of that.

I don't much like the per-day scheme, but I don't like attrition-based character resources as the core of play either (outside hp and gold that is) so I'll probably not be much help in mana pricing.

I take it that there's little like prep then? I mean, beyond carrying the right stuff into the dungeon.

QuoteMagic item crafting and usage is a lot more limited than it is in DnD. I don't like "Ironman" Fighters so magic items are not something that's required to get ahead. Even if you have them the uses of magic items are purely horizontal, in that they only give you more options. As for magic item crafting prereqs there is the requirement that you have the item crafter ability which requires you too have oth the necessary craft skill and a casting proficiency of the appropriate level. (Both merely require investment in skills). From there things get a bit more complicated but I'll cover that in another post.

A good approach. I'm making expendables pretty necessary, but working on making sure players stay constantly broke for the first three to five levels. Will permanent items be able to hold multiple upgrades, or are you keeping that limited weight as a strict cap on magic items?

QuoteI like the "find'em and get'em mixed with you getting some for free by opening up the option. Certain rituals (like summoning) require a specific "thing". Namely the correct *knowledge" skill. There are a mix of minor rituals (rites) that give you minor situation specific bonuses or outcomes (like burial rites, marriage rites, rites of passage, etc) and others are more costly like Long Range teleportation, atonement (if this even makes the cut), interplanar travel travel and the like. I can't think of any rituals that have a chance of failure. Essentially the bigger the effect the more costly/longer the rituals.

Mixed system could work alright. Went with featlike slots myself, if only because rituals are sort of a big deal there. Almost regret not going with the find 'em get 'em rules.

QuoteLong range teleportation is kept from  mitigating trips at all. Long range teleportation works on a portal system which means you have to go to the place you want to teleport to AND go to the place you want to teleport from and set up the gateways on both ends. This allows you to still have your journey without teleport screwing your adventures over and you cans till do the mystical gateway trope that people like.

I like portal-based stuff, but I prefer something like an expendable item you can carry (or a ritual... long casting times help prevent wrecking combat with this stuff) keyed to a portal on the receiving end. Sending portals still get used where needed, but as permanent portals that don't require a constant expenditure of resources.

But this is one of those things where anything but easy teleporting should help to mitigate the damage it can do, and houserules are common and easy.

Quote from: MGuyThe thing is, I expect people to use their AoOs on actual attacks and a significant portion of abilities require the use of an AoO. I might do the trade down thing in order to give people more AoOs but I'm not committed to that idea as it requires just a bit more bookkeeping on the player's part. The "maybe a bonus/maybe not paradigm is important in that I want people to be engaged. I haven't gotten to how defense works in more depth so I haven't explained that things like fighting defensively and full defense are still in the game and allow your active defense roll to be higher, thus practically guaranteeing a bonus. There are also swathes of defense focused abilities (parrying, reflecting, catching, etc) that will make Active Defense a reasonable option.

I guess I'll wait on the details before I comment much more on this then.

QuoteIt allows me to play around with damage totals in a not so direct way. It means high dexterity fighters don't have to trade off as much damage for choosing not to be high strength and allows for more balanced builds.

So it's a way to apply multiple stats? Fair enough. I've messed with stuff like this; just couldn't get it running quick enough for me.

QuoteGrabbing is a different monster than attacking. Its an all or nothing trade off because once you get into a grapple the grapple victim's turn is lost. They either have to struggle to get out of it (takes up their turn) or attempt to do something while continuing to suffer from the grappling. Being grappled makes you unable to use larger than bite sized weapons, makes casting a pain in the ass and unlikely to happen, and runs the danger of only getting worse from there. Because of the dangers presented by grappling I want to make grappling a fair but not overpowering option. So I upped the chances that it just doesn't work. Usually people who want to have grappling be a "thing" will get a feat that allows them to, after being able to hit the target, have a definite advantage in succeeding in the opposed fortitude roll and sticking the grapple.

Edit: Grapple and pin are distinguished in that to pin an opponent you have to grab them first. Pinning makes things extra bad for the grapple victim. Once pinned all they can do is use up a turn unpinning themselves and even then they'd be prone afterward.

I use assymetrical grabbing like Star Wars Saga personally. I think the light weapons rule makes more sense for the grabber than the grabbee in this case, though the grabbee can turn around and grab back.

As for preventing movement on a simple grab (which is pretty rough in terms of the action economy), you could just make movement an opposed strength roll when grabbing is happening. The worst offense of grappling (immobility) is 50/50 after the initial 50/50 instead of bumping the whole thing to 25/50. Likewise for the pinning, you could just make pinning harder rather than all of grappling (in my game, the pinner has to use a standard action to pin every round, and has to break the pin if he wants to defend against an attack).

I also leave prone-ness out of it mostly, unless you get thrown (the other cool move you can do to a grabbed guy, besides pinning).

Actually, I do have a little advice on the mana system: Make sure it's still balanced on the action economy somehow.

If 10 mana does 10 damage and 20 does 20, it is always better to spend 20 mana and one action on 20 damage than it is to spend 20 mana and two actions to do 20 damage. Whether it's damage dealing or healing. Similar logic applies to number of targets and such.

So either make sure there's diminishing returns on sinking further points into a spell, place a cap on the number of points that can be sunk into it, or both.

It's probably obvious, but I figured it was worth mentioning.

Quote from: MGuy;559633Depends on what level of Mage he is.

Everyone can practice "magic". There is no "magic" specific class. The mage would be the closest to that since all of his actual class abilities either allow him to get spells, metamagic feats, or allow him to use spells in a manner no other class covers.

Spells are kept under a tight reign. As mentioned before spells that everyone needs (like teleport, raise dead, plane shifting) are thematic and necessary for the game so they are rituals instead. Spells otherwise don't make you any more combatively powerful then any other class. Spells merely allow you to do very specific things with reality. They are more versatile than most of the more martial abilities (something that's seemingly impossible to avoid) but they don't do anything that would allow someone who concentrates on them to out do someone who chooses not to.

I still haven't started testing as of yet. The outlook I had on changing the spells was to keep the thematic ones, reduce overlap as much as feasibly possible, make it so that no one spell completely obviates the need for skills. What's more is acquisition of them is slower by virtue of having to rely on feats instead of getting a set per level. This is also helped by the necessity of Mana to power them, the cap on Mana usage per action, and the fact tat to change the dimensions/effects of the spells also require more feats. The Mage class has the upper hand in that they can acquire spells via class ability (as a bonus feat). What's more is you don't have to simply be a squishy caster that casts from the back. You can be a frontline fighting mage wwith certain feat combinations.

Tell me more.  Understand currently it looks VERY 4e to me. Please explain.