Frank's failure to comprehend the setting is an epic fail.
1) You can't get +1d12 damage via spells. There are NO spells except for low-level psionics.
2) Skills are important because there are, again, no spells. So you can't cast a level 2 divine spell to find traps.
3) It's an E6 variant. Sneak attack damage isn't gonna hit the crazy levels of a full D20 game.
So really, all he's saying is "But it doesn't play like full D&D with 20 levels and spells!".
Best to just ignore him until he get smart or gets bored. Because right now, he's making no sense at all.
Untitled replacement for GnG ruleset.
Moderator: Moderators
At the second level of rogue, you get Evasion. Taking half damage when the order of operations is "Divide damage by 2, then subtract 5" and you have 12 HP is a very good thing. The third level gets you your +1 to Fort and Will saves and +1 BaB, so you aren't loosing anything there that you would have been getting by taking some other class. Level 4 gets you Uncanny Dodge, which is, admittedly, rather shitty and should be enhanced now that you're not also getting scaling sneak attack bonuses.
Now, there is a legit concern that someone might take a 1 level dip in a ton of classes and get the abilities of all of them. That, I can accept, and you would fix that by saying "You loose the ability to sneak attack while flanking if you multiclass out of rogue before taking the first 4 levels." or something like that.
Now, there is a legit concern that someone might take a 1 level dip in a ton of classes and get the abilities of all of them. That, I can accept, and you would fix that by saying "You loose the ability to sneak attack while flanking if you multiclass out of rogue before taking the first 4 levels." or something like that.
FrankTrollman wrote:I think Grek already won the thread and we should pack it in.
Chamomile wrote:Grek is a national treasure.
With armor as DR, rapid fire low damage attacks get kicked in the balls. Assassin style characters in particular are hopeless, and daggers or knives are a shit choice. So is twf. It's quite likely that they won't even be able to damage highly armored targets.
Fundamentally if you're rogue isn't sneaking up behind dudes and stabbing them, I suspect many rogue players would have an issue with the class. The iconic images are guys with a cloak and a couple of small stabbing instruments.
Rogues get particularly shafted because of a low BAB, so it is unlikely they can benefit significantly from excess to hit being converted to damage. If you do this, you need to majorly buff the classes combat performance.
The set up absolutely bones monks for the same reasons. They were already practically unplayable, this makes them considerably worse. These archetypes were resolutely not that good at low levels, so I am puzzled as to why a dude with two short swords needs a nerf.
The dice scaling system doesn't work because 1d12+1d8 is better than 2d12. Which is just weird.
You're encouraging people to find a bunch of different size bonuses and staple them all together. Or something with a fixed plus to damage, like spikes. Because if you do that, you auto kill someone if you hit them.
Go for a fixed scalar by damage dice size, and I'd suggest starting with higher hitpoints. Just plain add the entire con score.
Fundamentally if you're rogue isn't sneaking up behind dudes and stabbing them, I suspect many rogue players would have an issue with the class. The iconic images are guys with a cloak and a couple of small stabbing instruments.
Rogues get particularly shafted because of a low BAB, so it is unlikely they can benefit significantly from excess to hit being converted to damage. If you do this, you need to majorly buff the classes combat performance.
The set up absolutely bones monks for the same reasons. They were already practically unplayable, this makes them considerably worse. These archetypes were resolutely not that good at low levels, so I am puzzled as to why a dude with two short swords needs a nerf.
The dice scaling system doesn't work because 1d12+1d8 is better than 2d12. Which is just weird.
You're encouraging people to find a bunch of different size bonuses and staple them all together. Or something with a fixed plus to damage, like spikes. Because if you do that, you auto kill someone if you hit them.
Go for a fixed scalar by damage dice size, and I'd suggest starting with higher hitpoints. Just plain add the entire con score.
Last edited by cthulhu on Mon Oct 18, 2010 2:14 pm, edited 3 times in total.
Yes, the class needs a major overhaul if you take 3d6 sneak attack dice away, starting with Full BAB & free TWF feats.
it's okay in normal E6, because you're relying on 6d6 potential sneak attack damage and a huge focus on to hit boosts, because if you can deliver rounds that hit WELL HARD often for almost 20 points of damage a peice.
In this version, average damage for an iconic rogue sneak attacking an iconic warrior is 0. An iconic monk can pretty much never actually hurt a level 6 warrior.
it's okay in normal E6, because you're relying on 6d6 potential sneak attack damage and a huge focus on to hit boosts, because if you can deliver rounds that hit WELL HARD often for almost 20 points of damage a peice.
In this version, average damage for an iconic rogue sneak attacking an iconic warrior is 0. An iconic monk can pretty much never actually hurt a level 6 warrior.
Last edited by cthulhu on Mon Oct 18, 2010 2:20 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Untitled replacement for GnG ruleset.
The problem is that all of this:
Is horseshit. You're writing a whole new game, with whole new everything. The only bit of genuine high-level concept work you got going is this:
Which means that when you start getting bogged down in fiddly crap like how many GP swords cost or what the numeric modifier will be for using a word two handed, you're talking about useless shit that doesn't matter. Because you haven't nailed down what types of characters your system is supposed to support. One of the classes is apparently going to be "Defender" but there will presumably be at least 3 others and they could be anything.
Falling back on Ghostwheel's vaguely defined and contradictory precepts is a waste of our time just as it is a waste of yours. Because those ideas are contradictory and vaguely defined. Ghostwheel has offered that he intends to manipulate numbers on the fly behind the scenes so that no choices the PCs actually make have any effects, but even that is not enough to actually make things come out the way he wants them to, because he still doesn't know how he wants things to work. He keeps offering contradictions, and until he recognizes and resolves his cognitive dissonance, nothing he says will actually mean anything.
-Username17
-Armour-as-DR stays, as does the idea of gaining additional damage from getting a higher roll than needed on the to-hit roll. These are good things, and I think they can be made to work. It may turn out that a one to one correlation between excess score on the to-hit roll and damage is too big and you'll have to accept getting +1 damage for each +2 extra to-hit you get. This will be play-tested.
-Shields should be distinct from body armour and not give DR. I'm currently leaning towards allowing you to use attack actions made on one turn to negate attacks on the next round by parrying them with the cavat that you cannot parry an attack that gets more on it's to-hit roll than you got on the parry to-hit roll. Shields would give you a to-hit bonus for parrying or make it better in some way in exchange for not making attacks with it.
-HP will be based strongly on size. Current plan is 10+Size Mod+Con Bonus or something thereabout. Possibly 1.5 Con Bonus. This resolves the age old issue of making housecats able to lethally maul commoners by giving housecats tiny HP pools which even a commoner could take out. It also means that being huge makes you scary without actually having to give large monsters any special "can flatten people in a round" powers.
-We will specifically not penalize large character's to-hit bonus for being large, nor give smaller characters a bonus; that perversely encourages giants who defend their entire body with a buckler while using a highly accurate attack style so they can hit at all and pixies wearing plate armour while swinging around a toy great-axe and it's not something we want to promote.
-Rampant killing off of characters will be prevented using an "honor" system in which characters who murder people that ask to surrender become "dishonorable" and, if sufficently dishonorable, are ousted from society and can be expected to be outright killed by anyone that is aware of their reputation who beats them in combat.
-There will be no "caster" classes that get a list of spells which they prepare and cast a set number of per day. These will, instead, be ritual effects. Any person can cast these, but alot of them have weird requirements like sacrificing a goat or having a special astronomical alignment which prevents them from being everyday things.
-Magical classes who are expected to do magic (or psionics) in their day to day life will get class abilities to that effect. Their powers will be explictly no more powerful than what a sufficently skilled individual of the same level could do with their skills. Alot of utility magic could seriously end up being a skill that having the class unlocks, ala the 2.E scrying skill.
-Everyone gets skills. Lots of skills. Enough that everyone has sufficent non-combat contributions to the party to justify their existance even regardless of their actual combat contribution and give them a good share of screen time when nobody is getting killed.
-Items that give you bonuses will be cheap, nonmagical and easy to get. A 100gp masterwork sword will give you the full +1/3 character level vertical bonus that you can ever get to your attack bonus. Any magic items that get handed out will give horizontal powers, like letting your attacks do fire damage, or attack ethereal people.
-Shields should be distinct from body armour and not give DR. I'm currently leaning towards allowing you to use attack actions made on one turn to negate attacks on the next round by parrying them with the cavat that you cannot parry an attack that gets more on it's to-hit roll than you got on the parry to-hit roll. Shields would give you a to-hit bonus for parrying or make it better in some way in exchange for not making attacks with it.
-HP will be based strongly on size. Current plan is 10+Size Mod+Con Bonus or something thereabout. Possibly 1.5 Con Bonus. This resolves the age old issue of making housecats able to lethally maul commoners by giving housecats tiny HP pools which even a commoner could take out. It also means that being huge makes you scary without actually having to give large monsters any special "can flatten people in a round" powers.
-We will specifically not penalize large character's to-hit bonus for being large, nor give smaller characters a bonus; that perversely encourages giants who defend their entire body with a buckler while using a highly accurate attack style so they can hit at all and pixies wearing plate armour while swinging around a toy great-axe and it's not something we want to promote.
-Rampant killing off of characters will be prevented using an "honor" system in which characters who murder people that ask to surrender become "dishonorable" and, if sufficently dishonorable, are ousted from society and can be expected to be outright killed by anyone that is aware of their reputation who beats them in combat.
-There will be no "caster" classes that get a list of spells which they prepare and cast a set number of per day. These will, instead, be ritual effects. Any person can cast these, but alot of them have weird requirements like sacrificing a goat or having a special astronomical alignment which prevents them from being everyday things.
-Magical classes who are expected to do magic (or psionics) in their day to day life will get class abilities to that effect. Their powers will be explictly no more powerful than what a sufficently skilled individual of the same level could do with their skills. Alot of utility magic could seriously end up being a skill that having the class unlocks, ala the 2.E scrying skill.
-Everyone gets skills. Lots of skills. Enough that everyone has sufficent non-combat contributions to the party to justify their existance even regardless of their actual combat contribution and give them a good share of screen time when nobody is getting killed.
-Items that give you bonuses will be cheap, nonmagical and easy to get. A 100gp masterwork sword will give you the full +1/3 character level vertical bonus that you can ever get to your attack bonus. Any magic items that get handed out will give horizontal powers, like letting your attacks do fire damage, or attack ethereal people.
OK, that's very different from D&D, but then you're writing an entirely new system, so whatever. That's fine. This persistent pipe dream that you can import anything at all from actual D&D books is just that - a pipe dream. You re using entirely different numerical bases that don't expand at the same relative rates and importing anything from existing D&D material, even after arbitrary modifiers, multipliers, or transforms is still only going to fit with your new system as often as drawing completely random numbers out of a fucking hat would. You're making a new system and it needs new inputs to actually function.Grek wrote:-"Tanking" as a combat role and the "Defender" archtype will be supported by this system. Refusing to attack characters who are defending against you will allow those characters to make attacks at a large bonus/make more attacks at you than normal. Thus, the "Defender" character can contribute by defeating powerful strikes that would kill other, less well protected characters and making sure that those characters do not get attacked.
Which means that when you start getting bogged down in fiddly crap like how many GP swords cost or what the numeric modifier will be for using a word two handed, you're talking about useless shit that doesn't matter. Because you haven't nailed down what types of characters your system is supposed to support. One of the classes is apparently going to be "Defender" but there will presumably be at least 3 others and they could be anything.
Falling back on Ghostwheel's vaguely defined and contradictory precepts is a waste of our time just as it is a waste of yours. Because those ideas are contradictory and vaguely defined. Ghostwheel has offered that he intends to manipulate numbers on the fly behind the scenes so that no choices the PCs actually make have any effects, but even that is not enough to actually make things come out the way he wants them to, because he still doesn't know how he wants things to work. He keeps offering contradictions, and until he recognizes and resolves his cognitive dissonance, nothing he says will actually mean anything.
-Username17
Again, this is not an E6 thing. You could use this and also use E6, but you don't have to. It's supposed to go all the way to 20.
The die scaling system that Ghostwheel outlined will not be used for the reasons which have been pointed out. If we do scale damage dice upwards, it will be by using some multiple of the average damage.
TWF will not be the goto way to get extra damage under this system. Getting a bigger, more damagey weapon is. Instead, TWF give you more attacks, which, in turn, lets you use special attacks like disarm, feint, etc. which let you do things that aren't damage. Which is what people apparently want out of their fencers.
Because of that, rogues will probably not want to TWF. Which is pretty reasonable, because I cannot think of alot of source material where people get stabbed in the back with two daggers at the same time.
Daggers being shitty for rogues due to their low damage is an unfortunate oversight on my part, which I'll make sure to correct for somehow, so that rogues can actually sneak attack a dude in plate armour. But it isn't actually new, since there's no reason to use a dagger over a short sword or a rapier in normal D&D either.
The fact that rogues don't get the accuracy bonus for hitting really accurately is weird, but I am not too concerned about it.
Monks will get full BaB under these houserules. They'll probably also be doing alot of tripping people with quarterstaffs and disarming swordsmen, rather than punching people so hard their brains explode. At least until their unarmed damage bonuses become big enough that they can. But I will also be giving them a look over when the rules are begining to settle down, to make sure they are not shit anymore.
Getting a bunch of size bonuses and stapling them together is a high level tactic that comes online once you're high enough level for the assorted giants to be PC characters. You can't just cast Enlarge Person for this, or, as far as I know, get it with a feat.
Spikes, if you're talking about the spell, no longer exists, seeing as spells do not exist. Getting fixed damage bonuses without magic is hard.
@Frank: What I'm going for is already pretty well defined, at least IMHO. It's "D&D, except where fighters are valid characters and wizards do not redefine the game every fourth level." So, we're going to take D&D stuff and then cut out the bits that make swordfighting and riding on a horse to get to the dragon's lair invalid in normal D&D.
And yeah, Ghostwheel's Grimoire stuff does not fit with these plans. But it's not really supposed to. It's supposed to replace those godawful GnG rules, which, while tagentally related, are not as far as I can tell, something Ghostwheel wrote for his Grimoire series of stuff.
The die scaling system that Ghostwheel outlined will not be used for the reasons which have been pointed out. If we do scale damage dice upwards, it will be by using some multiple of the average damage.
TWF will not be the goto way to get extra damage under this system. Getting a bigger, more damagey weapon is. Instead, TWF give you more attacks, which, in turn, lets you use special attacks like disarm, feint, etc. which let you do things that aren't damage. Which is what people apparently want out of their fencers.
Because of that, rogues will probably not want to TWF. Which is pretty reasonable, because I cannot think of alot of source material where people get stabbed in the back with two daggers at the same time.
Daggers being shitty for rogues due to their low damage is an unfortunate oversight on my part, which I'll make sure to correct for somehow, so that rogues can actually sneak attack a dude in plate armour. But it isn't actually new, since there's no reason to use a dagger over a short sword or a rapier in normal D&D either.
The fact that rogues don't get the accuracy bonus for hitting really accurately is weird, but I am not too concerned about it.
Monks will get full BaB under these houserules. They'll probably also be doing alot of tripping people with quarterstaffs and disarming swordsmen, rather than punching people so hard their brains explode. At least until their unarmed damage bonuses become big enough that they can. But I will also be giving them a look over when the rules are begining to settle down, to make sure they are not shit anymore.
Getting a bunch of size bonuses and stapling them together is a high level tactic that comes online once you're high enough level for the assorted giants to be PC characters. You can't just cast Enlarge Person for this, or, as far as I know, get it with a feat.
Spikes, if you're talking about the spell, no longer exists, seeing as spells do not exist. Getting fixed damage bonuses without magic is hard.
@Frank: What I'm going for is already pretty well defined, at least IMHO. It's "D&D, except where fighters are valid characters and wizards do not redefine the game every fourth level." So, we're going to take D&D stuff and then cut out the bits that make swordfighting and riding on a horse to get to the dragon's lair invalid in normal D&D.
And yeah, Ghostwheel's Grimoire stuff does not fit with these plans. But it's not really supposed to. It's supposed to replace those godawful GnG rules, which, while tagentally related, are not as far as I can tell, something Ghostwheel wrote for his Grimoire series of stuff.
FrankTrollman wrote:I think Grek already won the thread and we should pack it in.
Chamomile wrote:Grek is a national treasure.
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Username17
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But that's exactly the problem. What you are proposing is as much D&D as Hackmaster or Runequest is. The concept is recognizable. There's a DM, people have classes, they fight orcs. But none of that is the game mechanics. And mechanically, your stuff is unrecognizable. And will continue to get more so as you get further along.Grek wrote:@Frank: What I'm going for is already pretty well defined, at least IMHO. It's "D&D, except where fighters are valid characters and wizards do not redefine the game every fourth level." So, we're going to take D&D stuff and then cut out the bits that make swordfighting and riding on a horse to get to the dragon's lair invalid in normal D&D.
You can rip off some D&D concepts, but only in the same way that Arduin or Drači Doupě does. Your characters are not doing the same things in or out of combat, and they simply are not going to be interested in the same kinds of abilities. You already know that you can't use the D&D spells, and by extension you can't use the D&D Monster Manual. You have to write your own Bestiař and fill it with monsters that are appropriate challenges for the classes you're going to make.
Have you stopped and considered how completely unrecognizable a "Rogue" is tactically when you switch them from being a multi-attack blender of death to being some sort of one shot kill sniper dude? And more importantly, how completely you'd have to redesign the class to make that make any sense?
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Your tactics are the same: Sneak up on a dude, or flank a dude, and then stab them for a big enough bonus to damage to make what you do worth mentioning. You still are looking to put yourself into the same situations in order to get your special power to work, and you're still looking at the same counters to your stichk. The difference between using one big attack that does a pile of damage rather than a couple of smaller attack that add up to similarly big a pile of damage is less relevant than the difference between a blaster mage that does cold damage versus one that does fire damage.FrankTrollman wrote:Have you stopped and considered how completely unrecognizable a "Rogue" is tactically when you switch them from being a multi-attack blender of death to being some sort of one shot kill sniper dude?
FrankTrollman wrote:I think Grek already won the thread and we should pack it in.
Chamomile wrote:Grek is a national treasure.
.http://home.zipworld.com.au/~hong/ih/ help a lot 
I had a feeling you might have a more "fixed" variant. Glad I fishedcthulhu wrote:http://home.zipworld.com.au/~hong/ih/ help a lot
It still has massive problems, but Hong is a reasonable operator.
The problem is the party can never really beat closet trolls, so monsters like a T-rex will eat your face. This gap between your capability and monster CR's becomes larger as time goes by.
Edit: The Armiger is still flawed because no-one will ever attack them. The easiest fix is I suggest using the challenge rules provided and saying that whenever someone challenged by the Armiger takes a morale penalty, the Armiger gains tokens equal to his level divided by 4 rounded up.
Edit: here are some sessions and some house rules from another denner
http://www.tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?p=167415
Edit2: OH AND PLAY WITH RETRAINING
Otherwise you have to chose between power now and power later and that sucks donkey balls. However, retraining fixes this.
The problem is the party can never really beat closet trolls, so monsters like a T-rex will eat your face. This gap between your capability and monster CR's becomes larger as time goes by.
Edit: The Armiger is still flawed because no-one will ever attack them. The easiest fix is I suggest using the challenge rules provided and saying that whenever someone challenged by the Armiger takes a morale penalty, the Armiger gains tokens equal to his level divided by 4 rounded up.
Edit: here are some sessions and some house rules from another denner
http://www.tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?p=167415
Edit2: OH AND PLAY WITH RETRAINING
Otherwise you have to chose between power now and power later and that sucks donkey balls. However, retraining fixes this.
Last edited by cthulhu on Tue Oct 19, 2010 3:02 am, edited 3 times in total.
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Username17
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Hong's stuff is a step in the right direction, but it's still not very good. The Archer is still an incredibly shitty character because he fills his aim pool by spending move actions and he spends his aim pool by taking full attack actions. Also, the entire point of the class is a high rate of fire, but your aim bonuses only apply to one enemy at a time. And yeah, as you've noticed the Armiger is completely pointless because his powers only activate when he is attacked and he is the lowest priority target on the field at all times. That and the whole "masteries" thing just doesn't work very well - especially if you are multiclassing or making characters organically over a period of many levels.
But all that being said, Hong's Iron Heroes rewrite would be a better place to start a "you are all totally normal swordsmen who never ever teleport or travel through time" game system from. You just have to figure out how to balance the fact that conceptually the Executioner "kills enemies" while the Berserker "kills enemies and is very hard to kill."
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But all that being said, Hong's Iron Heroes rewrite would be a better place to start a "you are all totally normal swordsmen who never ever teleport or travel through time" game system from. You just have to figure out how to balance the fact that conceptually the Executioner "kills enemies" while the Berserker "kills enemies and is very hard to kill."
-Username17
So, I figured it was time to set down exactly what it is that I can keep from DnD, and what I'm going to actually have to write stuff up for:
-All of the spells in the book will stay, but as rituals rather than something you get by taking class levels in something. This means that while A, I do not have to write up a whole huge pile of effects for various ritual magic effects, and players who are already familiar with DnD will know what the spells do, it does mean writing up a system which assigns a reasonable set of rules for figuring out what the requirements for an arbitrary spell is. Chances are, I'm going to do this aWoD style and have the DM work out the specifics of the ritual, and just give some guidelines on how much it should cost and what sort of skills you need to learn ritual magic.
-New magic classes, which are in line with the sort of things that mundane people do.
-The skill system is basically fine, with the exception of some problem skills, Climb, Swim, Jump, Balance and so forth, which aren't at all useful, even if you discount magic. I'll need to rewrite this to be less shitastic. Specifically, Climb is going to let you get out of melee range with a full/standard/move action, based on the degree of sucess, while Swim and Jump are going to be folded into an Athletics skill that lets you swim, jump and run fast.
-Stealth will be getting much more powerful and hopefully easier to use. There will be a mechanic to allow a stealthy character to allow others to use their hide/move silently rolls at a penalty in order to let the party sneak in without mandating a 2 point/level point tax from the whole party if they want to sneak at all.
-Finalize damage/HP generation. Current plan is 1/2 of degree of sucess on to-hit gets converted to damage, and HP is CON+Size mod, making the average PC have a bit more HP on average.
-Combat maneuvers just need a full rewrite. Grapple, feint, trip, disarm, sunder, etc. all are getting rewritten from the ground up.
-Guidelines for converting base classes over, which will also cover the rogue problem and anything else that relies on massive damage that isn't going to fit with the new HP totals.
-A new monk class that is not terrible.
-A new fighter class that gets actual skills. May just consist of giving them more skill points and skill choices, may involve scrapping bonus feats and finding something else that works.
-All of the spells in the book will stay, but as rituals rather than something you get by taking class levels in something. This means that while A, I do not have to write up a whole huge pile of effects for various ritual magic effects, and players who are already familiar with DnD will know what the spells do, it does mean writing up a system which assigns a reasonable set of rules for figuring out what the requirements for an arbitrary spell is. Chances are, I'm going to do this aWoD style and have the DM work out the specifics of the ritual, and just give some guidelines on how much it should cost and what sort of skills you need to learn ritual magic.
-New magic classes, which are in line with the sort of things that mundane people do.
-The skill system is basically fine, with the exception of some problem skills, Climb, Swim, Jump, Balance and so forth, which aren't at all useful, even if you discount magic. I'll need to rewrite this to be less shitastic. Specifically, Climb is going to let you get out of melee range with a full/standard/move action, based on the degree of sucess, while Swim and Jump are going to be folded into an Athletics skill that lets you swim, jump and run fast.
-Stealth will be getting much more powerful and hopefully easier to use. There will be a mechanic to allow a stealthy character to allow others to use their hide/move silently rolls at a penalty in order to let the party sneak in without mandating a 2 point/level point tax from the whole party if they want to sneak at all.
-Finalize damage/HP generation. Current plan is 1/2 of degree of sucess on to-hit gets converted to damage, and HP is CON+Size mod, making the average PC have a bit more HP on average.
-Combat maneuvers just need a full rewrite. Grapple, feint, trip, disarm, sunder, etc. all are getting rewritten from the ground up.
-Guidelines for converting base classes over, which will also cover the rogue problem and anything else that relies on massive damage that isn't going to fit with the new HP totals.
-A new monk class that is not terrible.
-A new fighter class that gets actual skills. May just consist of giving them more skill points and skill choices, may involve scrapping bonus feats and finding something else that works.
FrankTrollman wrote:I think Grek already won the thread and we should pack it in.
Chamomile wrote:Grek is a national treasure.
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Username17
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Given that you are scrapping the spellcasters (7 classes), and the Monk (1 class), and doing a massive overhaul on the Fighter, Barbarian, and Rogue (3 classes), and the core rules have only 11 classes, what the fucking hell good is a conversion document?Guidelines for converting base classes over, which will also cover the rogue problem and anything else that relies on massive damage that isn't going to fit with the new HP totals.
Seriously, you are taking approximately 1% of the actual classes and making up the rest from scratch. And that 1% is basically entirely composed of the name. And that only spreads confusion. You'd be better off making classes from scratch, or stealing the classes from literally any other fantasy game, because that would sow less confusion.
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Half casters (bard, paladin, ranger) can stay, they just get their spellcasting abilities replaced with one of the class features that the new magical classes get. As such, we're keeping 6/11 classes, drastically changing one, and replacing the full casters (4/11) completely. You also get to keep most prestige classesFrankTrollman wrote:Given that you are scrapping the spellcasters (7 classes), and the Monk (1 class), and doing a massive overhaul on the Fighter, Barbarian, and Rogue (3 classes), and the core rules have only 11 classes, what the fucking hell good is a conversion document?
FrankTrollman wrote:I think Grek already won the thread and we should pack it in.
Chamomile wrote:Grek is a national treasure.
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Username17
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If you are replacing the Bard's casting, that's a whole new class. The Bard's spell list is about 500% longer than the entire rest of the class.Grek wrote:Half casters (bard, paladin, ranger) can stay, they just get their spellcasting abilities replaced with one of the class features that the new magical classes get. As such, we're keeping 6/11 classes, drastically changing one, and replacing the full casters (4/11) completely. You also get to keep most prestige classesFrankTrollman wrote:Given that you are scrapping the spellcasters (7 classes), and the Monk (1 class), and doing a massive overhaul on the Fighter, Barbarian, and Rogue (3 classes), and the core rules have only 11 classes, what the fucking hell good is a conversion document?
-Username17
No, you don't get to keep any prestige classes.
--PrCs will almost all have requirements that no longer make sense. You're re-writing the "pre-reqs" section for all of them, which is actually super important to balance.
--Most PrCs are for casters, or give casting to noncasters. Seriously, of course Complete Arcane is out the window, but you're also axing Assassins, Templars, and Temple Raiders.
--Most importantly, PrCs tend to have specialized and fiddly mechanics, or to interact at depth with parts of the rules that will be changed. Take Duelists, for instance. Setting aside the terribleness of the class, it's design is that it manipulates the AC and to-hit rules in complicated ways. If you redesign how, say, armor works, you will render the Duelist totally different in a completely unpredictable way.
From the DMG, you can keep unchanged maybe the Dwarven Defender, and that is ALL.
Arcane Archer-- needs a rewrite to deal with new magic item rules
Archmage -- Caster
Assassin --Caster
Blackguard --Caster
Dragon Disciple -- Caster
Duelist -- AC rules changed
Dwarven Defender -- Stays, assuming +X to ac still parses
Horizon Walker --probably needs a re-write to new spell effect standards.
Thaumaturgist -- Caster
Theurge --Caster
--PrCs will almost all have requirements that no longer make sense. You're re-writing the "pre-reqs" section for all of them, which is actually super important to balance.
--Most PrCs are for casters, or give casting to noncasters. Seriously, of course Complete Arcane is out the window, but you're also axing Assassins, Templars, and Temple Raiders.
--Most importantly, PrCs tend to have specialized and fiddly mechanics, or to interact at depth with parts of the rules that will be changed. Take Duelists, for instance. Setting aside the terribleness of the class, it's design is that it manipulates the AC and to-hit rules in complicated ways. If you redesign how, say, armor works, you will render the Duelist totally different in a completely unpredictable way.
From the DMG, you can keep unchanged maybe the Dwarven Defender, and that is ALL.
Arcane Archer-- needs a rewrite to deal with new magic item rules
Archmage -- Caster
Assassin --Caster
Blackguard --Caster
Dragon Disciple -- Caster
Duelist -- AC rules changed
Dwarven Defender -- Stays, assuming +X to ac still parses
Horizon Walker --probably needs a re-write to new spell effect standards.
Thaumaturgist -- Caster
Theurge --Caster
The pre-reqs do not change as much as you might think. "Ability to cast nth-level arcane spells." will still have a parsable meaning under the new rules, as will minimum skill ranks, BaB and pretty much everything else you care to name.
Advancing existing casting is easy; casters were already going to be getting additional class abilities that let them do pre-defined acts of magic. Advancing existing casting makes that advancement go ahead normally.
Giving people who couldn't already cast spells is a bit of a problem, but out of the DMG classes, that's seriously just 2 of them. It does mean that I'll have to write up guidelines for what a "grants half-casting to people that didn't have it" PrC would now look like, and trust DMs to fill in something reasonable from the list of allowed magical effects, or write up a few half-caster progressions and tell people to pick one for each class.
There are exactly two changes to AC going in*; the change to armour-AC interaction (armour does not give a bonus to AC) and the accuracy bonus to damage, in which beating the AC by a larger amount than needed gives you extra damage. This means that AC will be lower across the board and that having a spectacularly low AC means you get ganked easily by just about anything, unless you have a sufficently big DR, HP or other defensive tactic to make up for it. Exceptionally high AC doesn't do anything that it wasn't already doing, if you fall to beat the AC, you simply miss, as in normal DnD.
As such, Duelist is actually perfectly fine, with the exception that the 10th level ability to get a second 1d6 bonus damage die doesn't do anything. It doesn't stack with sneak attack, but it does work if you happen to be attacking with an attack that meets the requirements for precise strike, but not sneak attack. The thing where they get huge AC but puny DR seems fine to me
*Subject to change as time goes on; if it makes things easier to balance, I may end up dropping either of the accuracy-to-damage or the no armour bonus to AC rules. I am 99% sure that I will not, however, add more rules. Thay way leads only to heartache and frustration.
Advancing existing casting is easy; casters were already going to be getting additional class abilities that let them do pre-defined acts of magic. Advancing existing casting makes that advancement go ahead normally.
Giving people who couldn't already cast spells is a bit of a problem, but out of the DMG classes, that's seriously just 2 of them. It does mean that I'll have to write up guidelines for what a "grants half-casting to people that didn't have it" PrC would now look like, and trust DMs to fill in something reasonable from the list of allowed magical effects, or write up a few half-caster progressions and tell people to pick one for each class.
There are exactly two changes to AC going in*; the change to armour-AC interaction (armour does not give a bonus to AC) and the accuracy bonus to damage, in which beating the AC by a larger amount than needed gives you extra damage. This means that AC will be lower across the board and that having a spectacularly low AC means you get ganked easily by just about anything, unless you have a sufficently big DR, HP or other defensive tactic to make up for it. Exceptionally high AC doesn't do anything that it wasn't already doing, if you fall to beat the AC, you simply miss, as in normal DnD.
As such, Duelist is actually perfectly fine, with the exception that the 10th level ability to get a second 1d6 bonus damage die doesn't do anything. It doesn't stack with sneak attack, but it does work if you happen to be attacking with an attack that meets the requirements for precise strike, but not sneak attack. The thing where they get huge AC but puny DR seems fine to me
*Subject to change as time goes on; if it makes things easier to balance, I may end up dropping either of the accuracy-to-damage or the no armour bonus to AC rules. I am 99% sure that I will not, however, add more rules. Thay way leads only to heartache and frustration.
FrankTrollman wrote:I think Grek already won the thread and we should pack it in.
Chamomile wrote:Grek is a national treasure.
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Username17
- Serious Badass
- Posts: 29894
- Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm
It doesn't matter that high AC doesn't do anything it didn't do before, although of course it does because it now also reduces damage from attacks that do hit. The point is that ACs are totally fucking different numbers and bonuses to them don't mean anything vaguely close to the same thing. Further, the Duelist class is entirely based on trading the armor for AC out for a different bonus. Which is not the same thing at all as trading no armor bonus to AC out for increased AC.
Your plan of keeping the PrCs is a fucking retarded plan, because none of them are written for your entirely different system, so none of them will work with your new system. They all have to be rewritten.
The Tomes go as far as is possible while still allowing you to dumpster dive through original D&D books for content. This goes substantially farther in terms of transformation and you cannot dumpster dive for anything out of the books. You are going to have to write every single class and prestige class from scratch. The best you can possibly get is "inspired by" a 3.5 class or prestige class. This is why it would be better for you to start from Iron Heroes or Fantasy Craft or something that had already been rewritten partially in the direction you are trying to go than to start all the way at the beginning with a bunch of unusable D&D classes that you are trying to transmogrify.
-Username17
Your plan of keeping the PrCs is a fucking retarded plan, because none of them are written for your entirely different system, so none of them will work with your new system. They all have to be rewritten.
The Tomes go as far as is possible while still allowing you to dumpster dive through original D&D books for content. This goes substantially farther in terms of transformation and you cannot dumpster dive for anything out of the books. You are going to have to write every single class and prestige class from scratch. The best you can possibly get is "inspired by" a 3.5 class or prestige class. This is why it would be better for you to start from Iron Heroes or Fantasy Craft or something that had already been rewritten partially in the direction you are trying to go than to start all the way at the beginning with a bunch of unusable D&D classes that you are trying to transmogrify.
-Username17
Here's what our casting progressions are going to look like:
Full Arcane:
-Ranged attack (30ft) for 1d6 of [choose one: fire, cold, acid, sonic, force, electric, poison]*
-Meelee attack for 1d8 of the same. Both of these count as a light weapon for TWF.*
-Choose 1 cantrip based on energy type.*
-Choose 1 ability per level from the divination, abjuration, illusion or transmutation lists that you qualify for.
Half Arcane:
-Choose 1 ability every odd level from the divination, abjuration, illusion or transmutation lists that you qualify for.
-Choose 1 cantrip, even though you don't have the energy type.*
Full Divine:
-Choose if you get to channel positive or negative energy. Gain turning/rebuking as appropriate.**
-If positive, you can heal living for 1d4 damage at touch range as a standard action and get a 1d6 ranged touch attack against undead.
-If negative, you can heal undead for 1d4 damage at touch range as a standard action and get a 1d6 ranged tocuh attack against living.
-Choose 1 ability per level from the divination, abjuration, evocation, healing or necromancy lists that you qualify for.
--You must be able to channel positive/negative for healing/necromancy respectively.
Half Divine:
-Choose if you get to channel positive or negative energy. Gain turning/rebuking as appropriate.**
-Choose 1 ability per odd level from the divination, abjuration, enchantment, healing or necromancy lists that you qualify for.
--You must be able to channel positive/negative for healing/necromancy respectively.
Full Natural:
-You can sprout body parts that do two 1d6 natural attacks or a single 1d8 natural attack
-You gain wild empathy and track.
-Choose 1 ability per level from the healing, transmutation, enchantment, or natural lists that you qualify for.
Half Natural:
-You gain wild empathy and track.
-Choose 1 ability per odd level from the healing, transmutation, enchantment, or natural lists that you qualify for.
*This ability can be gained as a feat, and lets you get your Int Mod in energy types.
**This ability can also be gained as a feat and you get 1.5 times as many turn attempts, rounded up.
Full Arcane:
-Ranged attack (30ft) for 1d6 of [choose one: fire, cold, acid, sonic, force, electric, poison]*
-Meelee attack for 1d8 of the same. Both of these count as a light weapon for TWF.*
-Choose 1 cantrip based on energy type.*
-Choose 1 ability per level from the divination, abjuration, illusion or transmutation lists that you qualify for.
Half Arcane:
-Choose 1 ability every odd level from the divination, abjuration, illusion or transmutation lists that you qualify for.
-Choose 1 cantrip, even though you don't have the energy type.*
Full Divine:
-Choose if you get to channel positive or negative energy. Gain turning/rebuking as appropriate.**
-If positive, you can heal living for 1d4 damage at touch range as a standard action and get a 1d6 ranged touch attack against undead.
-If negative, you can heal undead for 1d4 damage at touch range as a standard action and get a 1d6 ranged tocuh attack against living.
-Choose 1 ability per level from the divination, abjuration, evocation, healing or necromancy lists that you qualify for.
--You must be able to channel positive/negative for healing/necromancy respectively.
Half Divine:
-Choose if you get to channel positive or negative energy. Gain turning/rebuking as appropriate.**
-Choose 1 ability per odd level from the divination, abjuration, enchantment, healing or necromancy lists that you qualify for.
--You must be able to channel positive/negative for healing/necromancy respectively.
Full Natural:
-You can sprout body parts that do two 1d6 natural attacks or a single 1d8 natural attack
-You gain wild empathy and track.
-Choose 1 ability per level from the healing, transmutation, enchantment, or natural lists that you qualify for.
Half Natural:
-You gain wild empathy and track.
-Choose 1 ability per odd level from the healing, transmutation, enchantment, or natural lists that you qualify for.
*This ability can be gained as a feat, and lets you get your Int Mod in energy types.
**This ability can also be gained as a feat and you get 1.5 times as many turn attempts, rounded up.
Last edited by Grek on Sun Nov 14, 2010 7:56 am, edited 1 time in total.
FrankTrollman wrote:I think Grek already won the thread and we should pack it in.
Chamomile wrote:Grek is a national treasure.