Author Topic: 1001 Homebrew Ideas to Flesh Out Sometime  (Read 308609 times)

Offline Garryl

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Re: 1001 Homebrew Ideas to Flesh Out Sometime
« Reply #320 on: February 11, 2013, 04:25:24 PM »
Weapons of Legacy done right

Some notes for now...
1) A weapon is a cool tool. It does neat things. It is not, however, an extension of your class features. Working better with some class features is fine. Requiring them for basic functionality is not.
2) Costs should bring benefits worth the cost. Levels at which the weapon gains nothing should have no costs, appropriate to the lack of benefit.
3) It's a cool toy and you're going out of your way to make use of it, including both special costs, requirements, and learning another damn subsystem. These things are more than just what you can buy for level-appropriate cash. Not so much greater numbers, but special abilities kind of things.

Not a huge fan of how the special costs are set up. They feel like the weapon is sapping your strength, rather than you devoting your energies towards unlocking its power. Ergo, the costs as they appear are gone. You still spend cash to awaken the legacy and all that, but the abilities are split in two. One set you get just for doing the rituals. No level requirement, just cash and time and research and maybe a minor quest or two (like they are now). This set is basic stuff, basically what kind of magic item you can get just from spending that cash normally.

The second set is the special stuff. Things that you'd expect from class features and well-made feats. This is because you unlock them by spending class levels and feats. Spend a feat, get a legacy ability. Spend a class level in the newly revised 3-level Legacy Champion class (sort of like bloodline levels, but as actual class levels instead of pseudo-LA... better look into bloodlines one of these days), and get a chunk of abilities based on your level and how much of the weapon you've unlocked.

Offline Garryl

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Re: 1001 Homebrew Ideas to Flesh Out Sometime
« Reply #321 on: February 15, 2013, 06:15:22 PM »
Just futzing about with terminology a bit.

Die size: The size of an individual die. There is no die size smaller than 1d1, nor higher than 1d20 (percentile dice don't count, they're on their own separate scale). If an effect changes a die size beyond the highest or lowest size, keep track of how many steps beyond the limits it is, but only for interacting with other die size-modifying effects.
1d1 -> 1d2 -> 1d3 -> 1d4 -> 1d6 -> 1d8 -> 1d10 -> 1d12 -> 1d20

Damage Rating: The expression, possibly containing multiple dice, normally used to calculate damage done. Any given damage rating contains only one size of die, although it may involve rolling multiple such dice. There are different tracks of damage rating, each of which has different expressions at each step. If a damage expression it found in multiple damage rating tracks and does not specify which, assume it's in the first such track (as they appear below).
   If an effect changes a damage rating beyond the highest or lowest step, keep track of how many steps beyond the limits it is, but only for interacting with other damage rating-modifying effects. However, unlike die sizes, damage ratings extend indefinitely upwards. Every step upward beyond those listed has twice as many dice as the one two steps lower.
   If one or more effects modify both a damage expression's die size and damage rating, apply the changes to die size after the changes to damage rating.
Standard (d6): 1d2 -> 1d3 -> 1d4 -> 1d6 -> 1d8 -> 2d6 -> 3d6 -> 4d6 -> 6d6 -> 8d6 -> 12d6 -> 16d6
Advanced (d8): 1d3 -> 1d4 -> 1d6 -> 1d8 -> 1d10 -> 2d8 -> 3d8 -> 4d8 -> 6d8 -> 8d8 -> 12d8 -> 16d8
Compressed (d4): 1d1 -> 1d2 -> 1d3 -> 1d4 -> 1d6 -> 2d4 -> 3d4 -> 4d4 -> 6d4 -> 8d4 -> 12d4 -> 16d4
Expanded (d10): 1d4 -> 1d6 -> 1d8 -> 1d10 -> 1d12 -> 2d10 -> 3d10 -> 4d10 -> 6d10 -> 8d10 -> 12d10 -> 16d10

(Just a note. For common weapon sizes, 1d12 is expanded, 1d10 is advanced, 2d4 is compressed, and everything else is standard.)
« Last Edit: February 15, 2013, 11:46:50 PM by Garryl »

Offline sirpercival

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Re: 1001 Homebrew Ideas to Flesh Out Sometime
« Reply #322 on: February 15, 2013, 06:18:34 PM »
Interesting that with the same number of die size increases, standard and compressed do more damage than the others.
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Offline Garryl

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Re: 1001 Homebrew Ideas to Flesh Out Sometime
« Reply #323 on: February 15, 2013, 11:42:54 PM »
Interesting that with the same number of die size increases, standard and compressed do more damage than the others.

Yeah. I was thinking about that as I wrote it. I think the solution is just to move the baseline up. I mean, anything that actually uses the non-standard damage rating has to start at a higher level to begin with to avoid defaulting to standard.

It's not perfect, but the quirky scaling is a byproduct of me wanting to have damage expressions of the same type but on different tracks be as close to identical as possible when moving up or down one step. For example, expanded should, technically, skip 1d10 and go straight from 1d8 to 1d12.
« Last Edit: February 15, 2013, 11:53:05 PM by Garryl »

Offline Jackinthegreen

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Re: 1001 Homebrew Ideas to Flesh Out Sometime
« Reply #324 on: February 23, 2013, 04:43:59 PM »
Agile Athlete:

Prereq: Dex 13, 2 ranks in Climb, Jump, and Swim

Benefit: You may use your Dexterity modifier in place of your Strength modifier for Climb, Jump, and Swim checks.  You may not carry more than a light load while benefiting from this feat, and the combination of your Armor Check Penalty and Dexterity modifier must be greater than 0.

Offline Garryl

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Re: 1001 Homebrew Ideas to Flesh Out Sometime
« Reply #325 on: February 24, 2013, 12:08:32 AM »
Isn't that a strictly inferior version of the Agile Athlete printed in Races of the Wild?

Offline Jackinthegreen

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Re: 1001 Homebrew Ideas to Flesh Out Sometime
« Reply #326 on: February 24, 2013, 12:24:49 AM »
Slightly.  It does allow Swim to benefit from Dex as well, but at the expense of ACP and the character's load getting in the way.  Which is unlikely in the first place given the kind of characters that would use it anyway (dextrous types with light armor), so that last part is mostly just flavor text like what the designers add on when they think it'll matter but in practice it won't.

Offline Jackinthegreen

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Re: 1001 Homebrew Ideas to Flesh Out Sometime
« Reply #327 on: February 25, 2013, 04:03:07 PM »
Three Monkeys Style

Prereqs: No idea

Benefit:  Spend whatever resource to blind, deafen, or mute opponent.

Offline phaedrusxy

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Re: 1001 Homebrew Ideas to Flesh Out Sometime
« Reply #328 on: February 25, 2013, 11:15:53 PM »
Three Monkeys Style

Prereqs: No idea

Benefit:  Spend whatever resource to blind, deafen, or mute opponent.
Sounds awesome. Prereq: Stunning Fist, uses Stunning Fist usages to power the feat.

Now what is the next feat in the chain, "12 Monkeys' Style", going to do?  :D
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Offline Amechra

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Re: 1001 Homebrew Ideas to Flesh Out Sometime
« Reply #329 on: February 25, 2013, 11:59:51 PM »
Kills all non-Monks on the Material Plane?
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Offline Garryl

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Re: 1001 Homebrew Ideas to Flesh Out Sometime
« Reply #330 on: February 26, 2013, 12:05:03 AM »
Render the target insane and send him back in time?

Offline veekie

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Re: 1001 Homebrew Ideas to Flesh Out Sometime
« Reply #331 on: February 26, 2013, 12:09:19 AM »
A tactical feat to blind, deaf and mute targets as the three tactics?
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Offline FireInTheSky

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Re: 1001 Homebrew Ideas to Flesh Out Sometime
« Reply #332 on: February 26, 2013, 12:33:59 PM »
What about the No More Monkeys feat which disallows Jump checks?   :P

Offline Jackinthegreen

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Re: 1001 Homebrew Ideas to Flesh Out Sometime
« Reply #333 on: February 27, 2013, 03:16:17 PM »
Dragon Disciple revamp:

Cleric/Dragonfire Adept dual-progression PrC.

Offline Garryl

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Re: 1001 Homebrew Ideas to Flesh Out Sometime
« Reply #334 on: February 28, 2013, 04:32:01 PM »
Qualifying for bonus feats.
I don't remember exactly what the rules are (if they're even properly defined). Here's what I think they should be...

Specified Bonus Feats: If an effect grants one or more specific bonus feats without offering any choice or selection, you need not meet the prerequisites for the feat or feats. This includes effects that grant one or more specific bonus feats based on a separate choice (such as a 3.5E Ranger's Combat Style).

Selectable Bonus Feats: If an effect grants one or more bonus feats chosen from a list or matching some criteria (such as a Pathfinder Ranger's Combat Style feats), you must meet the prerequisites of such feats to select them. If you do not qualify for enough feats, any excess are lost.

As always, specific overrides general. Specific abilities (such as for 3.5E's and PF's Ranger Combat Style abilities) may function differently.

Offline phaedrusxy

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Re: 1001 Homebrew Ideas to Flesh Out Sometime
« Reply #335 on: February 28, 2013, 04:57:44 PM »
Render the target insane and send him back in time?
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Offline Garryl

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Re: 1001 Homebrew Ideas to Flesh Out Sometime
« Reply #336 on: March 01, 2013, 01:23:21 PM »
3E Basic
Some (hopefully) simplified rules based on 3rd edition. Ideally this will be like an introductory ruleset

Assume (to keep things simple) that the rules only go up to 6th level. Yeah, go E6 or whatever.

Actions: You get a standard action + movement each round. You can trade the standard action for more movement. Full-round actions don't exist.

Standard actions
(click to show/hide)

Free actions
(click to show/hide)

Movement
(click to show/hide)


Stat generation is array-based. Put 16, 14, 14, 12, 10, 8 across your 6 ability scores as you choose.
Classes, skills, and spell lists will be simplified, feats will be made less trappy, and stuff.
BAB does not grant extra attacks, partly because there's no full attack any more. Also partly because it would only happen at exactly 1 level and only with a small subset of the classes. Depending on how simple things go (all the way down to just Fighter/Rogue/Cleric/Wizard), it might just be one class to boot, in which case just make it a class feature if we want it.

Offline Eldritch_Lord

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Re: 1001 Homebrew Ideas to Flesh Out Sometime
« Reply #337 on: March 01, 2013, 05:23:26 PM »
3E Basic
Some (hopefully) simplified rules based on 3rd edition. Ideally this will be like an introductory ruleset

*snip*

Classes, skills, and spell lists will be simplified, feats will be made less trappy, and stuff.

I ran a similar D&D for Beginners campaign for my younger cousins a while back and came up with some stuff along those lines you could borrow:
(click to show/hide)

Offline Jackinthegreen

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Re: 1001 Homebrew Ideas to Flesh Out Sometime
« Reply #338 on: March 01, 2013, 07:31:27 PM »
Deflective Armor addition:

This counts as a force effect, thus raising the wearer's AC against attacks from incorporeal opponents.

Offline Garryl

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Re: 1001 Homebrew Ideas to Flesh Out Sometime
« Reply #339 on: March 02, 2013, 10:40:15 AM »
Alternatives to shield spikes:

All of these increase the damage done by shield bash attacks and change its damage type. They can be made masterwork and enchanted as weapons independently of the shield to which they are attached.

Shield Spikes: Deals piercing damage
Shield Razors: Deals slashing damage
Weighted Shield: Deals bludgeoning damage