Quote from: SettembriniI propose this houserule:
Every guy has a certain amount of "tactical points". Each tactical point allows the guy to act like he had a feat that he doesn´t have.

True20 uses Conviction points in this way. It's a neat soloution, but requires players to have a fairly comprehensive knowledge of the rules. I imagine this counts doubly for a game like D&D with its abundance of Feats.

Metagame resources are about as non-old-school as it gets, IMO. Fate points that let you avoid dying are about the limit of what OSG will tolerate.

If I wanted that kind of thing I'd just play Iron Heroes or Burning Wheel.

If you need a feat for tactical points, I don´t see it as metagame resource. More like the versatility the fighter actually should have but hasn´t.

Quote from: SettembriniCali wants something portable, I guess.

I propose this houserule:
Every guy has a certain amount of "tactical points". Each tactical point allows the guy to act like he had a feat that he doesn´t have. Certain feats like metamagic etc. obviously won´t be legal.

The Unearthed Arcana spin on hero points works this way... but it doesn't restrict is so long as you meet all the prerequisites. And the "you can only spend one action point a round" thing keeps you from emulating a metamagic feat and doing it for free.

Quote from: CalithenaMetagame resources are about as non-old-school as it gets, IMO. Fate points that let you avoid dying are about the limit of what OSG will tolerate.

If I wanted that kind of thing I'd just play Iron Heroes or Burning Wheel.

I personally don't care too much if it's "proper OSG" or not. Now that's it's been brought up, I'll endorse it as a "good way to go" whether or not it's properly OSG. It lets players try cool things without throwing all restrictions to the wind so the cool becomes boring. If I wanted that, I'd play Wushu.

Well, fine, CS, and if you got a good idea out of it then I'm glad. But note the title of the thread...

Sett's idea if driven by the feat system has some merit I think. It's got the same Janus-head issue as so many other things like this (cosmic power pools in champions being the apotheosis):

- if it stays in the background and supports cool ideas players have in their imagination, then it's what I'm looking for and on-topic

- if it becomes an excuse for rifling through the book and finding the precise feat that will work here to solve a game problem, then it's fucked up the ass with a +10 vorpal glaive

Cosmic power pools ALWAYS became the second. Feats being what they are, I'm not sure it has to turn out quite so badly in this case. Thanks for the idea, and keep 'em comin'.

The old fashioned stat check.

The player states what he wants to do and you assign a stat that the stunt falls under. Roll a d20 and aim to roll under your stat.

Failure - Character loses action and/or suffers an AoO (depending on stunt) or another negative penalty (flat footed, trips, fumbles item etc)

Success

by 1-4, stunt is successful. However, if applicable, a negative also results. So a somasult over an enemy in a tight corridor (Dex check) in order to get behind it and gain a flanking bonus, will be successful in this case, but the character will suffer an AoO in the attempt.

by 5-8 Successful and the character gains a +1 bonus to the action that is the ultimate purpose of the stunt.

by 9-12 Success and the character gains a +2 bonus to the ultimate action.

by 13-16 Success and the character gains a +4 bonus to the ultimate action.

Strength stunts could involve climbing one handed, clinging to a bucking bronko, crumpling a tankard, rolling a rock along a corridor to crush enemies.

Dex stunts could include any kind of acrobatic manuervre to gain an advantage, contortions, dodging a swingind chandelier by jumping on top of it.

Con stunts could include eating the most distasteful food ever, undergoing scarification rituals, imbibing heroic amounts of drink or drugs/

Int stunts could include recalling entire passages of a fleetingly seen book to recall information, recalling an already cast spell (Heroic), memorising a huge labyrinthe.

Wis stunts could include channeling more of your God's power than strictly safe, riding stunts, tracking enemies by smell alone.

Cha stunts tricking a dwarf out of his armour, completely changing your mannerisms and appearance on a moments notice.

Mods to stat check roll.

Difficult +2
Very Difficult +4
Impressive +6
Heroic +10
Madness +16

One way of implementing a program like Sett proposes would be to go card-based.  A hand of seven cards wouldn't have the limitless breadth of being able to activate every feat in the game, but it would be much more manageable.

For my new Star Wars game, I plan on addressing this whole problem by simply trying to keep in mind that the rules can be ignored if everyone is having a good time and keeping in the spirit of the game.  So if the Jedi says he's going to use his lightsaber to slide down a metal wall like Erol Flynn slicing a sail in twain, I'm not going to look a damn thing up.  That's too awesome to not let it work.

(BTW, I had a Gadget Pool for my pre-teen genius Kid Widget that I only made stuff for that I could do in my head.  Now that I think about it, I should've asked for disad points for that.  I was just trying to avoid becoming the guy who is looking stuff up all the damn time.)