Author Topic: Base System Changes [WarCraft]  (Read 3474 times)

Offline RedWarlock

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Base System Changes [WarCraft]
« on: April 01, 2013, 05:19:41 AM »
Dice
This is all fairly standard, with the addition that I borrow 5e’s advantage/disadvantage mechanic. Specifically, the combat dice mentioned below are a form of multi-stacking advantage, along with the base idea that an advantage and a disadvantage cancel each other out. Advantages or disadvantages stack, to a max of 3 rolls.

(I have a general Rule of Three which will show up in various places. Three failures loses an extended test, three dice at most on an advantage or disadvantage, a maximum of three targets for an offensive roll, etc.)

Base Attributes
The core six stats work the same as in regular d20. Base 10 average, stat/2-5 for modifier.

Currently, my standard for character creation is a flat array, 7, 9, 11, 13, 15, 17.

Strength
Your Strength modifier is added to damage with melee weapons, bows, and thrown weapons, (1× mod per hand wielding the weapon) and to Fortitude saves and defense.

Dexterity
Your Dexterity modifier is added to melee attack rolls, and to Reflex saves and defense, including your AC.

Constitution
Your Constitution modifier is added to the number of hit points gained per class level. Your Constitution also grants you additional Stamina points equal to your Constitution modifier × your fighter level ×¼.

At 1st level, you gain bonus hit points equal to your Constitution score, and you have negative hit points equal to your Constitution score which increase by your Con score at levels 11 and 21.

Intelligence
Your Intelligence modifier is added to damage with wands, guns and crossbows (1× mod per hand wielding the weapon), as well as the number of skill points gained per class level. These bonus points can only be used to buy ranks, not skill tricks.

At 1st level, you gain bonus skill points equal to your Intelligence score, which you can spend on any skill, for up to 4 ranks, separate from class skill restrictions, or any skill trick up to 2 points in cost.

Wisdom
Your Wisdom modifier is added to ranged attack rolls, and to Initiative checks. Wisdom is also added to your AC when unencumbered by armor.

Charisma
Your Charisma modifier is added to Will saves and defense. Your Charisma also grants you additional Mana points equal to your Charisma modifier × your caster level ×½.


Core Numbers and Advancement
BAB and saves function differently here, starting with slightly different names.

Combat Bonus
In place of BAB, Combat Bonus is added to all attacks, but at the attacker’s choice, at the start of his turn, he can split half of this bonus (rounded down) off and add it to damage dealt, instead, as a Power Attack. Damage dealt with with weapons using two hands (including bows and rifles) gain this bonus doubled.

Iterative attacks are removed (but see Combat Dice). When a character reaches +6, +16, and +26 bonuses, the base damage dice and base ability bonuses to damage are increased by a factor. This increase to damage occurs on any weapon strike, include Opportunity Attacks and any other type of held weapon attack, but does not apply to natural weapons or magic-based attacks, which scale on their own by level.

Example: Someone who deals 1d8+3 damage with a sword (or 1d8+6 when wielding it two-handed) who gains +6 CB would now deal 2d8+6 as a base, or 2d8+12 when wielding it two-handed. When they reach +16 CB, they now deal 3d6+9, or 3d6+18 two-handed.

Combat Dice
When making an attack roll, you can spend a Combat Die to roll an extra d20 on your attack. Take the better of the two rolls as your attack roll. You can spend multiple combat dice if you have them, for a maximum total of three dice on any given attack (defensive effects which would normally force a disadvantage on an attack roll cancel out a combat die, but do not affect the cap, meaning you can spend extras to get back up to three dice if you desire). Any dice so used are considered expended until the end of your turn, after which all spent combat dice are refreshed.

You spend a combat die to make Opportunity Attacks, upon which you can also spend additional dice to boost the attack.

When a character reaches +6, +11, +16, +21 and +26 CB, they automatically gain an additional combat die. Additionally, many combat-centric classes, such as the Warrior, Rogue, and Paladin, gain an extra combat die as one of their 1st-level class features. Multiclass characters can gain only one bonus combat die in this manner.

Saves and Defenses
The base progression is affected, starting at one-half your level, adding the relevant modifier. Each class will only gain one good save, which starts as a +2 bonus, and increases at a ¾ rate (basically take a ¾ attack bonus and add two, and you have the good base save).

The base 3 saves also function as defenses for certain effects. Generally, it’s a flip of whomever is the more active party, the attacker or defender. Offensive stuff like attacks, skill checks, and so on use an active offense roll versus a static defense, unless the effect hits more than three targets simultaneously, in which case the targets make individual saves versus the offender’s static modifier+10. Static stuff like traps and poisons use a flat DC which the defender rolls a save against.

Fortitude Save and Defense
Fortitude determines your stability and inherent toughness. Fortitude is used to oppose grapples, knockback effects, and test your resistance to poison, cold, or other effects, with a successful save or missed offensive roll minimizing the effect.

(Unlike normal, Fort is used for stability effects, while things that could be damage effects are reworked as such.)

Reflex Save and Defense
Reflex determines your automatic ability to move, in avoidance or in offense. Reflex is used to avoid area effects like bursts of flame or sprays of acid, touch effects like ray spells, and determines whether an acrobatic foe can avoid your reflexive attacks. Reflex also forms the basis of your AC.

(Reflex is a merge of regular reflex saves, touch AC, and also acts as the basis of the DC for Tumble checks.)

Will Save and Defense
Will determines your determination, your ability to resist influences, both social and magical. Will is used to resist social effects like intimidation, see through illusions, and break magical enchantment of the mind.

(Will adds a social component to the usual magical resistance. Will is also a mixed blessing for follower characters, like pets and minions, as their Will defense is used as the basis for Command and Beastmastery DCs.)

Effective Class Levels
There are several kinds of ‘effective X level’, like caster level, but extended out to other areas, like the ‘effective rogue level’ of Uncanny Dodge.

Character Level
Several effects, including assessing XP gain, reference your Character Level. This is the highest level in any class you have attained.

Caster Level
Only the highest level caster class applies, for most purposes, like bonus mana points.

Some effects are relative to your individual casting classes, and may reference one of three types; Arcane (mages, warlocks, necromancers, death knights), Divine (priests, paladins), and Primal (druids, shamans), with adepts counting as their respective caster-type.

Fighter Level
This effectively serves as the replacement for Initiator level, for anything inherited over from ToB. It also determines Stamina points, which act as a reserve booster spendable in select circumstances. (mainly it’s serving as a way to do ToB maneuvers without a refresh, and/or a way to do specific boosts for physical actions. Think along the lines of 4e psionic augments, boosts to at-will powers to make them as strong or effective as encounter powers.)


Level Advancement
In order to gain a level, you must spend 1000 XP × your current high level. If you have multiple classes at your highest level, you can select any one of them to gain the advancement. This advancement must occur during an unbroken long rest, such as a night’s restful sleep.

Feats
Feats are gained at first level, and every odd level after.

Retraining is possible, at a cost of 50 XP × the level the feat was gained, during a long rest.

Attribute Increases
Every even level, a character gains the ability to increase one attribute by a single point, limited to one of three attributes which are considered core for their class, specified in that class entry.

Multiclass characters must select from the attributes for the class gaining the new highest level. These increases can be retrained to another class’s options for free when that class reaches that level. (For example, let’s say a character reaches level 6 as a Mage, and chooses Intelligence as their improvement. If they later take levels in Warrior, when they reach level 6 in the Warrior class, they can choose to swap that improvement slot to Strength.)

At 4th, 8th, 14th, 18th, 24th, and 28th levels, they gain a second type of point increase, which can be placed in any attribute, at the player’s choice.

At 11th and 21st level, all attributes increase by one point.

Your total improvements spent in a single attribute cannot exceed one higher than the total improvements in the other five attributes combined.

[would like to insert summary table of progression, most likely broken into 3 10-level columns]

Multiclassing
You can advance in multiple classes, if you choose.

In order to gain an additional class, you must take up training in your new class’s techniques, whether through study, an intense personal experience, or the guidance of a trainer or master. After having trained, you must spend 1000 XP during a unbroken long rest, after which you will gain your class level. Additional levels can be purchased at the new level × 1000 XP. (a long rest for each, I think)

Multiclassing is not like in standard d20 rules, instead it shares more similarities with the Gestalt rules. When you gain a class level, instead of appending the new class hit dice and bonuses to your current ones, you compare that level with the other classes of that same level, and take the best hit dice and highest skill points. Save and combat bonuses are compared against the highest totals from each class, as are base mana points and stamina points, taking the best of each. You also gain the class features, with the exception that features of the same name cannot be gained multiple times, and do not stack.

I need to adjust the wording, but: By default, each class grants only one good save, although some classes may have a secondary bonus to particular saves built into the progression (akin to the Scout's Battle Fortitude) which can be stacked with an already-good save. You cannot have more than two good base saves via multiclassing, and when presented with a third good save, must either drop another save to gain the new high save, or ignore the new class's granted save.

More to come, as I think of it. Probably go into separate posts.

Questions? Comments? Concerns? Ideas? Please tell me!

Edit: Changed the default Power Attack structure to be binary, on/off, locked at 1/2 CB rounded down. Less complexity for a built-in feature.

Edit: Altered the stats added to what types of attacks and damages, and yanked Dodger level. It'll just roll into Fighter level.
« Last Edit: April 25, 2013, 01:43:54 AM by RedWarlock »
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Offline RedWarlock

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Re: Base System Changes
« Reply #1 on: April 05, 2013, 04:23:15 AM »
Okay, so obvious flaw in the multiclassing structure. How would I keep players from gestalting to just get all-good saves? That's not my goal, and it takes out the point of even having bad saves when they could do so easily. It's the same problem I hate from lots of 3e and almost every 4e build. "I want to play class X. How can I get stat boosts to X and Y, what races has that combo?" This isn't supposed to be that way, and I want to avoid that inclination in the mechanics. Ideas?
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Offline RedWarlock

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Re: Base System Changes [WarCraft]
« Reply #2 on: April 06, 2013, 07:36:35 PM »
Meh, y'know what? Screw it. The base saves are just base saves. The stats bumped through Attribute Increase are the real major part of the progression.

Working on class post now. Will get it posted by the end of the night. (C'mon people, give me something here! I'm doing this so I can get some feedback on the ideas, not just blow it out in the wind!)
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Offline Garryl

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Re: Base System Changes [WarCraft]
« Reply #3 on: April 06, 2013, 11:37:15 PM »
The loss of additional statistical benefits from more HD makes pure multiclassing a losing scenario. At the same time, due to the way xp scales, you need to make sure that all classes scale quadratically with respect to level (and thus linearly with respect to xp) and be very careful to avoid frontloaded classes. At the same time, a certain degree of frontloading is necessary to make sure that low level PCs are actually more than just featureless racial hit dice and actually have some schtick to call their own. In that regard, you'll probably want more in the way of low level abilities that don't hold their weight as well at higher levels (though don't quite become useless) so that lower level PCs have good power for their level, but multiclassing in a couple of low level classing doesn't give an excessive power boost.

Offline RedWarlock

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Re: Base System Changes [WarCraft]
« Reply #4 on: April 07, 2013, 02:15:02 AM »
The loss of additional statistical benefits from more HD makes pure multiclassing a losing scenario. At the same time, due to the way xp scales, you need to make sure that all classes scale quadratically with respect to level (and thus linearly with respect to xp) and be very careful to avoid frontloaded classes. At the same time, a certain degree of frontloading is necessary to make sure that low level PCs are actually more than just featureless racial hit dice and actually have some schtick to call their own.
Okay, so what about the idea of features that are functionally exclusive? Either:
A: Abilities that are their own actions, and can't interact (like 4e attack powers) that maybe remove those interoperability restrictions with later levels (like being able to take 3.5 warlock's Eldritch Blast and later make iterative attacks with it like a ranged weapon? Not saying I'll do this, but just for sake of comparison), or for instance combining 3.5 barbarian's rage with the ability to cast spells, they can't coexist, but provide wider options with strategy, with the Rage Mage (bad example but..) as a way to later combine them in a fashion.
OR
B: Powers take impose a penalty on their use in some other fashion. I can't think of any current examples, but I was thinking of making my Rogue class have full CA (BAB) with a limited SA progression, but the ability to take additional penalties to the attack to gain extra SA dice on a hit. The mixed tradeoff would put them at the high-CA progression for combat dice, meaning their accuracy would be high already (and they would get some extra reliability from rolling twice for their main attacks) but it would also put them at a lower accuracy overall, compared to someone using straight-up attacks. This would also mean that the static SA dice would be effective anywhere, but they come in slower, while the penalty-based SA dice would be combinable with other attack benefits, at the loss of overall accuracy. The high CA to start also means that a rogue multiclassing to a full-CA class doesn't get as much out of it. Even if they take levels in Warrior or whatever, they still need to 'pay' for that extra damage on each attack roll, rather than escaping the lower bonus progression as would happen with a normal 3.5 rogue getting gestalted with a high-BAB class.
In that regard, you'll probably want more in the way of low level abilities that don't hold their weight as well at higher levels (though don't quite become useless) so that lower level PCs have good power for their level, but multiclassing in a couple of low level classing doesn't give an excessive power boost.
Can you give me some examples of current abilities that act like that?
« Last Edit: April 07, 2013, 02:16:56 AM by RedWarlock »
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Offline Garryl

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Re: Base System Changes [WarCraft]
« Reply #5 on: April 07, 2013, 02:38:41 AM »
The loss of additional statistical benefits from more HD makes pure multiclassing a losing scenario. At the same time, due to the way xp scales, you need to make sure that all classes scale quadratically with respect to level (and thus linearly with respect to xp) and be very careful to avoid frontloaded classes. At the same time, a certain degree of frontloading is necessary to make sure that low level PCs are actually more than just featureless racial hit dice and actually have some schtick to call their own.
Okay, so what about the idea of features that are functionally exclusive? Either:
A: Abilities that are their own actions, and can't interact (like 4e attack powers) that maybe remove those interoperability restrictions with later levels (like being able to take 3.5 warlock's Eldritch Blast and later make iterative attacks with it like a ranged weapon? Not saying I'll do this, but just for sake of comparison), or for instance combining 3.5 barbarian's rage with the ability to cast spells, they can't coexist, but provide wider options with strategy, with the Rage Mage (bad example but..) as a way to later combine them in a fashion.
OR
B: Powers take impose a penalty on their use in some other fashion. I can't think of any current examples, but I was thinking of making my Rogue class have full CA (BAB) with a limited SA progression, but the ability to take additional penalties to the attack to gain extra SA dice on a hit. The mixed tradeoff would put them at the high-CA progression for combat dice, meaning their accuracy would be high already (and they would get some extra reliability from rolling twice for their main attacks) but it would also put them at a lower accuracy overall, compared to someone using straight-up attacks. This would also mean that the static SA dice would be effective anywhere, but they come in slower, while the penalty-based SA dice would be combinable with other attack benefits, at the loss of overall accuracy. The high CA to start also means that a rogue multiclassing to a full-CA class doesn't get as much out of it. Even if they take levels in Warrior or whatever, they still need to 'pay' for that extra damage on each attack roll, rather than escaping the lower bonus progression as would happen with a normal 3.5 rogue getting gestalted with a high-BAB class.
In that regard, you'll probably want more in the way of low level abilities that don't hold their weight as well at higher levels (though don't quite become useless) so that lower level PCs have good power for their level, but multiclassing in a couple of low level classing doesn't give an excessive power boost.
Can you give me some examples of current abilities that act like that?

A great many low level Wizard spells are like this.
(click to show/hide)

Also consider low levels maneuvers. Strikes are great when you only get one attack, but need the higher end effects to keep up with the attacks you give up from higher level full attacks. The numerical benefits of 1st-level stances are always useful, but (other than Leading the Charge) make up a significantly greater portion of your numerical advantages at low levels (+1d6 from Punishing Stance is 20-35% more damage at level 1, but can drop to 10% or less by mid levels).

Unbound soulmelds give useful bonuses, but don't usually have the versatility or power to do more than support other options at higher levels.

Offline RedWarlock

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Re: Base System Changes [WarCraft]
« Reply #6 on: April 07, 2013, 05:30:07 AM »
A great many low level Wizard spells are like this.
(click to show/hide)
Okay, but some of those are some of the 'i win' buttons I'd rather not promote in my game. I don't care for SoDs as a general rule (and my players don't usually go so high-op as to utilize them the way you as a COer might expect. They know they exist, but they don't optimize their save DCs to make them all-but-assured-victories.) More likely, SoD-type effects would become short-duration disablers, with the short duration becoming long-duration versus lower-level opponents.

I also don't like relying on pass/fail abilities like true seeing, FoM, and other such that invalidate whole sets of play options. If anything, I would turn them into high-bonus abilities akin to True Strike.

Also consider low levels maneuvers. Strikes are great when you only get one attack, but need the higher end effects to keep up with the attacks you give up from higher level full attacks. The numerical benefits of 1st-level stances are always useful, but (other than Leading the Charge) make up a significantly greater portion of your numerical advantages at low levels (+1d6 from Punishing Stance is 20-35% more damage at level 1, but can drop to 10% or less by mid levels).

Unbound soulmelds give useful bonuses, but don't usually have the versatility or power to do more than support other options at higher levels.
Stances I can see, but low-level maneuvers usually get traded out. In most terms, you're talking damage, lower expectations which don't keep up at higher levels. I've got stuff built in already that does some of that, like the basic attack scaling, just to start.
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Offline RedWarlock

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Re: Base System Changes [WarCraft]
« Reply #7 on: April 23, 2013, 06:49:53 AM »
Tweaked a few things, listed in navy blue in the OP.

Planning to post more tomorrow night.
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Offline LordErebus12

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Re: Base System Changes [WarCraft]
« Reply #8 on: May 06, 2013, 01:47:54 AM »
it looks good so far, but get some of the classes up soon. I'm dying for a glimpse of the Shaman class.