Author Topic: 1001 Homebrew Ideas to Flesh Out Sometime  (Read 308689 times)

Offline Garryl

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Re: 1001 Homebrew Ideas to Flesh Out Sometime
« Reply #280 on: November 23, 2012, 05:41:23 PM »
Yet another variant skill system.

There are 6 skill checks, one for each ability score. You invest skill points into each ability score, gaining a bonus on all skills related to that score. If you're trained in a skill (it's a class skill for one of your classes), you also get a +5 bonus on skill checks that can reasonably go under that skill (think of class skills more like specific areas of expertise to supplement your training/ranks). No Int modifier to skill points, just 1-4 per level based on your class (take the current skills/level for classes and just divide by 2). Don't multiply by 4 at 1st level.

Combine this with the skillset of your choice. Be flexible, no reason there can't be some overlap between skills (for the +5 bonus, that is; not all Disable Device checks need be Int-based, Dex works as well sometimes).

The +5 for class skill is from the 3 point increase over your level you normally get, plus another 2 points for synergies so we don't have to worry about them (and since they don't exist). Or maybe it's because that's what SWSE and 4E do for trained skills. The possibilities are... no, that's about all of them.

Offline Garryl

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Re: 1001 Homebrew Ideas to Flesh Out Sometime
« Reply #281 on: December 04, 2012, 01:17:02 PM »
Expanding on this.

Break Away
(click to show/hide)


AoOs
(click to show/hide)


Mobility
Prerequisites: Dex 13, Dodge
Benefit: You gain a +4 dodge bonus to your armor class against attacks of opportunity. In addition, you can move up to your full movement speed when performing a break away action instead of only half.


Spring Attack
Prerequisites: Dex 13, Dodge, Mobility, BAB +4
Benefit: As part of performing a break away action, you can split your movement before and after your attack (instead of only after). You provoke no attacks of opportunity for your movement out of your starting space or any space you attack from, nor do you provoke an attack of opportunity from any creature you attack for any movement made as part of the break away action. If you have the ability to make multiple attacks as part of a break away action, you can apply some of your movement between each attack as well.


Bounding Assault
Prerequisites: Dex 13, Dodge, Mobility, Spring Attack, BAB +6
Benefit: As part of performing a break away action, you can make a full attack instead of only a single attack.


Defensive Break Away
Prerequisites: Tumble 5 ranks, BAB +1
Benefit: You do not suffer a penalty on your attack rolls made as part of a break away action for fighting defensively. If you fight defensively as part of a break away action, you may still suffer the penalty on other attack rolls made during the round.


Plow Over
Prerequisites: Improved Overrun
Benefit: As part of a break away action, you can attempt to move through the spaces of any creatures you attacked and overrun them as part of the same action.


Offline Garryl

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Re: 1001 Homebrew Ideas to Flesh Out Sometime
« Reply #282 on: December 04, 2012, 07:33:49 PM »
Core feat prerequisite changes. Because the current ones are just stupid so damn often. Naturally, many other feats that rely on these as prerequisites will also need to have similar changes.

Combat Expertise: BAB +1
Dodge: --
Far Shot: Precise Shot
Improved Bull Rush: Str 13
Improved Disarm: BAB +1
Improved Feint: Bluff 1 rank
Improved Grapple: Improved Unarmed Strike
Improved Overrun: Str 13
Improved Sunder: BAB +1
Improved Trip: Str 13
Power Attack: BAB +1
Precise Shot: --
Rapid Shot: Dex 13, Precise Shot
Weapon Finesse: Dex 13

Less because they're stupid and more because there's no reason for you to have them if you can't use them unless you're doing something cheesy.
Metamagic Feats: In addition to any existing prereqs, most of these require the ability to cast a spell of the metamagic's spell level adjustment or higher. The exceptions are variable adjustment metamagics (Heighten) and +0 adjustment metamagics (Invisible, Sanctum), which just require the ability to cast spells (ignoring level).

Offline RobbyPants

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Re: 1001 Homebrew Ideas to Flesh Out Sometime
« Reply #283 on: December 04, 2012, 09:34:27 PM »
As I said in the other thread, I like the Break Away mechanic. As for the feats, it's a nice boost to stuff like Mobility, but while Bounding Assault is nice, it has a pretty big feat investment.

Our games may play out differently, but I'm not used to people trying to move from one opponent to another that often. Perhaps it's an effect of the AoO system, the full attack system, or the player just deciding to finish up the guy they're on. That being said, in my experience, I'm not sure I'd want to spend feats to improve something like Break Away.

What I like about Bounding Assault is that it basically gives you a way to treat a full attack as a standard action. It's just a round about way to get there. I've been debating for some time now if I should make full attacks standard actions. I feel it would kick a lot of ToB in the nuts...
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Offline Garryl

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Re: 1001 Homebrew Ideas to Flesh Out Sometime
« Reply #284 on: December 04, 2012, 10:22:48 PM »
Like most things in this thread, I'm not shooting for any particular balance point with these feats. Mostly it's just an exploration of the mechanics, namely that the Spring Attack line of feats can pretty easily work with the break away action.

Here's a question: How much should full-attacking as a standard action cost, if it were available? WotC says you can get limited forms of it for 3-5 feats (SA line), 1 level of Barbarian (Pounce), a swift action and a 2nd-level power (Hustle), and probably a few other ways. Me, I think it's worth more than 1 feat, and I agree that 4 is a little excessive. What are your thoughts?

Offline Amechra

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Re: 1001 Homebrew Ideas to Flesh Out Sometime
« Reply #285 on: December 04, 2012, 10:38:19 PM »
I'd say around 3 feats would be fine, really.
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Offline Garryl

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Re: 1001 Homebrew Ideas to Flesh Out Sometime
« Reply #286 on: December 05, 2012, 01:51:01 AM »
Barbarian needs more rage!

Core mechanics:
Rage. The basic rage can be started as a free action, lasts for 0 rounds, and does exactly nothing. You get to craft your own personal form of rage from a number of templates and effects, each of which can be further modified on the fly by spending fury points. Only 1/encounter initially, but at higher levels you can enter multiple rages at once, or consecutively.
Fury points. Whenever you deal damage or take damage, you gain one or more fury points. Your maximum fury and the amount you start each encounter with rises with your level.



Rage components:
   Each component has a base cost in fury points, which may be positive or negative. Add up the total cost of all components used in your rage. The rage costs that many fury points to enter, and while enraged your maximum fury points are reduced by the same amount. If the final cost is negative, you gain the negative value when entering the rage, and your maximum fury is likewise increased.
   Many components have an augment effect. While in a rage, you can spend fury points on the augment components of your rage. Except as noted, this takes no action. You needn't even be conscious. You can normally only spend fury points on augmentations during your turn. Track the total amount of fury spent on augmenting each component across the duration of your rage to determine the total effect. You cannot spend more fury points on a given component's augmentations than your class level.
   Since the base duration of a rage is 0 rounds, ending instantly, you must select a rage component that alters its duration. You can only select one such component. Duration components are listed separately for ease of use.

General Rage Components
(click to show/hide)

Penalty Components
(click to show/hide)

Duration Components
(click to show/hide)
« Last Edit: December 05, 2012, 01:52:54 AM by Garryl »

Offline RobbyPants

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Re: 1001 Homebrew Ideas to Flesh Out Sometime
« Reply #287 on: December 05, 2012, 07:02:29 AM »
Here's a question: How much should full-attacking as a standard action cost, if it were available?
Three feats makes it available for a non-human barbarian at 6th level.
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Offline Garryl

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Re: 1001 Homebrew Ideas to Flesh Out Sometime
« Reply #288 on: December 07, 2012, 11:31:28 AM »
Rogue + Ambush = Profit?
Borrows a bit of 5E's expertise dice conceptual space, too.

Sneak Attack: At 1st level, you gain 1 Sneak Attack die, and one additional die at every subsequent odd-numbered Rogue level. Your Sneak Attack dice only apply when you attack a target that you have flanked or that is denied its Dexterity bonus to AC, but they apply for each valid attack you make. Sneak Attack dice can be spent to use ambushes. You can spend Sneak Attack dice on any number of ambushes as part of the same attack. Unspent Sneak Attack dice are lost after the attack.

Ambush: At 1st level, you learn the Deadly Strike ambush and one other ambush of your choice. You learn another ambush at every even-numbered Rogue level. You can learn any ambush on your class list, even if you do not have enough Sneak Attack dice to use it yet.

(click to show/hide)

Trapfinding
Evasion
Trap Sense
Uncanny Dodge
Improved Uncanny Dodge
Special Abilities
... all the same as normal.

Ambush Master: At 20th level, the cost of all of your ambushes with fixed Sneak Attack die costs are reduced by 1 (minimum 1 die). Those with variable costs function as though you spent 1 more die on them than you actually did as long as you spent at least 1 Sneak Attack die.

Offline Garryl

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Re: 1001 Homebrew Ideas to Flesh Out Sometime
« Reply #289 on: December 07, 2012, 12:04:15 PM »
Craft (spellsmithing)
Lets any schlub with some Craft skill make magic items.
Follows the normal rules for making mundane items. No feat or spell or CL prerequisites.
DC = 20 + CL of item

Just running a couple of numbers here.
23*23 = 529
A trained smith (4 ranks, skill focus) with some natural talent (Int 15), good tools (mwk artisan tools), and a competent assistant (aid another) has a +13 modifier. He can make a +1 sword in about 38 weeks.

47*47 = 1369
A master smith (10 ranks, skill focus) with some natural talent (Int 15 + 1 level), some magical ability (Magecraft spell), enchanted tools (mwk artisan tools, one of them +10 forges), and two competent assistants (aid another x2) has a +37 modifier. He can make a +1 sword in about 10 weeks, or a +5 sword in about 7 years.

71*71 = 5041
A grandmaster smith (16 ranks, skill focus) with absurd talent (Int 17 + 3 level), some magical ability (Magecraft spell), enchanted tools (mwk artisan tools, one of them +10 forges), and an army of competent assistants (aid another x10) has a +61 modifier. He can make a +1 sword in about 4 weeks, a +5 sword in about 2 years, or a +10 sword in about 7.6 years.

Alright, never mind, this won't work. The Craft skill takes way too damn long. Just to get to the 1000g/day that spellcasters do, you need a check result of about 265. That's plainly ridiculous. Remind me to redesign Craft one of these days.

Offline Eldritch_Lord

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Re: 1001 Homebrew Ideas to Flesh Out Sometime
« Reply #290 on: December 07, 2012, 05:54:07 PM »
Alright, never mind, this won't work. The Craft skill takes way too damn long. Just to get to the 1000g/day that spellcasters do, you need a check result of about 265. That's plainly ridiculous. Remind me to redesign Craft one of these days.

As a quick fix:

Efficient Magical Craftsman [General]
Prerequisite: 8 ranks in each of Spellcraft, Knowledge (Arcana), Craft (Spellsmithing), and at least one other Craft skill, ability to cast magecraft
Benefit: When determining the cost in gold and time for crafting a magic item that relies on a Craft skill in which you have at least 8 ranks (Craft [Weaponsmithing] for weapons and so forth), you use the item's price in gold pieces instead of silver pieces (or silver instead of copper, if making daily checks).  You may take a -5 penalty to your check to instead use the item's price in platinum pieces (or gold pieces, if making daily checks).
Normal: You use an item's price in silver pieces to determine the cost and time for crafting the item.  If you make checks by the day instead of by the week, your progress is in copper pieces instead of silver pieces.

...or something like that, with whatever added restrictions you want to limit the kinds of magic items you can craft that fast.  With that feat, +1 longsword can thus be made by your master smith in a day and a half (cost is 232 pp, DC is 23, taking 10 is 42 with the -5 platinum penalty, 42*23 = 966, 200/966 = ~.2 weeks), and it takes your grandmaster just over 4 days to make a +5 longsword (cost is 5032 pp, DC is 45 after voluntarily increasing the DC by +10, taking 10 is 66 with the -5 platinum penalty, 66*45 = 2970, 2970/5032 = ~.6 weeks).

Compared to the normal times of 2 days for the +1 sword and 5 days for the +5 sword, the smith actually comes out ahead of a wizard--which is really how it should be, at least for the basic magical arms and armor if not rings and such.  If you don't want mundane crafters to be able to outdo wizards, you can increase the platinum penalty to -10 or so, it'll still vastly speed up the process.
« Last Edit: December 07, 2012, 05:56:05 PM by Eldritch_Lord »

Offline veekie

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Re: 1001 Homebrew Ideas to Flesh Out Sometime
« Reply #291 on: December 08, 2012, 04:31:37 AM »
Simple matter is that Craft is first, cost based in terms of duration, and linear in growth.

Complexity and Mass-based crafts - Make the 'craft unit' factor based on the weight of material involved(actually, volume, but weight applies as well and heavy materials tend to be more difficult to work), multiplied by the complexity rank of the craft.
Your craft rank then, goes against the complexity rating, which sets the DC of the roll, and the number of craft units you score per roll of work.
Raw materials just pay for craft units.


And of course, you don't actually make money with this directly, unlike magical goods, resale is not assured.
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Offline Garryl

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Re: 1001 Homebrew Ideas to Flesh Out Sometime
« Reply #292 on: December 09, 2012, 09:36:42 PM »
Percentiles are for suckers.

Concealment check: 1d20 + your miscellaneous modifiers (usually none) against DC 5 (concealment) or DC 11 (total concealment) to hit.

Incorporeal attack check: 1d20 + your miscellaneous modifiers (usually none) against DC 11 to affect a corporeal target. Non-magical sources have a -10 penalty on the check. Ghost Touch weapons and force effects have a +10 bonus. Positive energy effects against incorporeal undead automatically succeed.

Arcane spell failure check: 1d20 + your miscellaneous modifiers (usually none) against DC 1 (no armor) up through DC 8 (full plate) to successfully cast. Shields increase the DC by 1 (light shields), 3 (heavy shields) or 10 (tower shields).

Offline Jackinthegreen

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Re: 1001 Homebrew Ideas to Flesh Out Sometime
« Reply #293 on: December 09, 2012, 09:52:57 PM »
I like that one Garryl, especially since it's difficult to use a d100 and two d10's are a bit annoying compared to a single d20.

While I'm here:  Change Multiweapon Fighting from requiring three hands to ability to wield three manufactured weapons at once.  Why?  Roronoa Zozo, that's why.  Usually needs the mouthpick weapon ability from Lords of Madness, but whatever.
« Last Edit: December 09, 2012, 10:29:32 PM by Jackinthegreen »

Offline Garryl

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Re: 1001 Homebrew Ideas to Flesh Out Sometime
« Reply #294 on: December 10, 2012, 01:00:59 AM »
Just a reminder to myself that since I've already done a Divine Mind remake, and I'm working on a Marshal remake (in this thread, near the end of the 1st page, I think), I should probably do one for the Dragon Shaman as well, it being the third major aura user. In order to do so, I'll try to stick to my formula of minor aura + class aura + special mechanic. Minor auras are, of course, the same deal as everyone else, though I'll probably give the same number as Divine Mind, rather than the increased number that I'm giving the Marshal. For the draconic auras, I'll have to check Dragon Magic and PHB2 to see what already exists, and then make them awesome. I already have a few psychic auras in the Divine Mind that are similar to some of them.

Finally, I need the special mechanic. Divine Mind has manifesting with mantles, Marshal has/is getting it's own fancy new shouts/battlefield presence mechanic (mundane buffing and debuffing). What to do for the Dragon Shaman? There are a few options that come to mind. Invocations (like the Dragonfire Adept) and spontaneous arcane spellcasting are the most obvious. Neither mesh quite as well as I'd like with the existing sub-mechanics of Breath Weapon and Touch of Vitality that I'll look to keep. Maybe those two together could be enough? Spend points from your ToV pool to enhance your breath weapon in various ways, and/or make it do the healing? Food for thought.

Offline Garryl

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Re: 1001 Homebrew Ideas to Flesh Out Sometime
« Reply #295 on: December 11, 2012, 04:23:45 PM »
Sometimes you want an effect with a random chance of success or failure and more than one degree of success or failure. Doing more than the bare minimum will get you a better result, or failing badly might bring the pain. The standard method of randomization is the check (1d20 + modifiers vs. DC), and I have no intention of changing that. I rather like that concept as the unifying mechanic of the d20 system. No, what I'm talking about is the degrees of success/failure.

There are two main ways I can see to do it (and a few others that I won't really get into here). Each has its own advantages that make it suitable for different goals.

1) Multiple DCs. Make your roll, compare it to each of the DCs. Whatever you succeed on, you get, and nothing more. This works best, I feel, when extreme success can have multiple different ways of expressing itself, not all of which are strictly superior to all others of lower values. This setup makes it easy to let you pick which one (of the DCs you've made) you want to take after resolving the roll (as opposed to beforehand, like with the Craft skill, which is a separate matter in which you're trying for a more difficult task rather than succeeding on the same task with differently flying colors). I don't think this works well when degrees of failure (how badly you failed) are involved as in order to fail less (but still fail), you're technically succeeding, just at a less-than-ideal DC.

2) Exceed or fail by a threshold. Make your roll, and see how far above (or below) the DC you rolled. You get whatever it says. This works best, I feel, when extreme success is strictly superior to lesser success, or any time degrees of failure are involved (such as with the Disable Device skill).


Offline Garryl

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Re: 1001 Homebrew Ideas to Flesh Out Sometime
« Reply #296 on: December 12, 2012, 03:03:38 PM »
Cheap magic items.

Now completed and expanded to a stupidly stupendous degree!
« Last Edit: June 10, 2016, 05:03:59 PM by Garryl »

Offline Garryl

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Re: 1001 Homebrew Ideas to Flesh Out Sometime
« Reply #297 on: December 15, 2012, 01:01:08 AM »
Perfect Defense [General]
Prerequisite: Int 13, Combat Expertise
Benefit: A natural 20 on an attack roll does not automatically hit you. It may still hit you if the total result is high enough to hit your AC, as normal, but the attack does not automatically hit as a result of rolling a 20 on the die. This effect does not apply while you are denied your Dexterity modifier to AC.
   In addition, you can use your Intelligence score in place of your Dexterity score when determining the bonus you add to your AC (subject to all the normal limitations of adding your Dex mod to AC).
Normal: A natural 20 on an attack roll automatically hits, regardless of the target's AC. You add your Dexterity modifier to your AC.

Steadfast Determination for AC.

Offline Jackinthegreen

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Re: 1001 Homebrew Ideas to Flesh Out Sometime
« Reply #298 on: December 15, 2012, 07:45:45 PM »
Biopolitan (Deathless version of Necropolitan)

I'm just going to refluff as necessary here since it doesn't take much.

Offline veekie

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Re: 1001 Homebrew Ideas to Flesh Out Sometime
« Reply #299 on: December 16, 2012, 02:38:44 PM »
Seems to me it'd be better named Immortal personally.
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