Post/Author/DateTime	Post
Qual 09-01-05, 11:56 AM	Hey there. There's a distinct possibility that I'll be DMing a game soon. The people that I'll be playing with have at least played a version of D&D sometime in their lives, though are probably more familiar with Neverwinter at this point. I DMed about a year ago, with a couple of alternative rules. Before I go implementing them again, or trying out new ones, I wanted to get people's opinions on them. Here they are, in no particular order: 1) Alt rule: Defender rolling AC. A DMG alt rule where the defender rolls a d20 instead of simply "taking 10" on their defence. In my last game it seemed to work, but I was wondering if there were any serious reprecussions when we get to higher levels. 2) HP vs. Vitality - Just curious about people's experience with this. Does the Vitality become extremely deadly at any point? Am I looking at too many changes to make this work? 3) Action points - How do they work? I know there are different ways to aquire them, and I can probably figure that aspect myself, but what is their mechanic? (I'd rather not have to buy Eberron for a single game mechanic) Thanks in advance for any advice you might have. -Qual
Mind Rogue 09-01-05, 12:53 PM	1.) This has the possibility of making combat even more swingy, since the PCs can roll really lowly for their AC. However, because it introduces a bell-curve, you'll probably be closer to the average overall. While that usually helps the PCs, at higher levels, most monsters have proportionately high attack bonuses, so average rolls might increase the PCs odds of being hit by multiple attacks. It also may slow down game play because of having to make more calculations from the extra die rolls. A better option would probably be to make it a "players roll the dice thing" so that their opponents are not making attack rolls to hit them, but rather the PCs are making dodge attempts to avoid them. All the monsters would then have static attack rolls of 10 +attack bonus while the PCs have a dynamic AC. 2.) At low levels, the PCs are likely to be very glad to use the vitality system, since it essentially gives them extra hp to work with and very few monsters can deal enough damage to chop through all of their wound points in one lucky critical. At higher levels, however, it can make life a bit more dangerous because there is the possibility that their opponent will get lucky and score a critical and take the PC down in one hit. When the opponent is a dragon who gets five attacks, where even the tertiary attacks deal 1d8+5 and the primary bite can deal 2d8+10 or more (Young Adult Red Dragon: CR 13+1), it only takes one or two lucky blows to take someone down for the count. Granted that the reversal is also true, but most monsters have high constitution scores, and the PCs will be in a lot more fights, so this works against them in the long run. You might allow the PCs to add their level to their wound points to give them a little buffer, but it won't affect things too much. Also, the rules for creatures with regeneration are kind of querky, so you might treat it more like fast healing to simplify things. 3.) Every level, characters get 5 + 1/2 level Action Points (AP). Depending on the source, they either get to carry them over, or else they overlap meaning the old ones are wasted (I prefer to use the drain method since it encourages people to use them). Action Points are otherwise nonreplenishable. In d20 Modern, you can only spend 1 AP a round while in Eberron, some effects require multiple AP to be used. When originally introduced in d20 Modern, you could spend 1 AP to add 1d6 to any d20 roll or to activate certain class abilities. At level 8+, you roll 2d6 and apply the highest die, and at 15+ you roll 3d6. UA and Eberron introduced new uses, such as spending an AP to gain another use out of limited abilities such as Smite Evil and Rage, automatically stabalizing, gaining a feat for 1 round, getting an extra attack during a full attack, and other stuff. Each of the above powers cost 1 AP, although some of the Eberron abilities require 2 AP.
Sinaz 09-01-05, 01:32 PM	I can only comment on the first house rule. I've used this myself, and it can be fun or boring. Depends. What we did to keep it dynamic and interesting is have both the attacker and defender roll simultaneously with the damage dice in the mix. That way its like DICE BATTLE SUPER ARENA!!!! where each attack has a player and the DM throwing thier dice at each other (sort of) which makes it really frenetic and fun. But if you break it down so that the attacker rolls... then the defender rolls... then the attacker rolls damage... combat takes FOREVER! Everyone rolls together! That keeps the roll for defense variant playable.
Qual 09-01-05, 02:11 PM	Thanks for the quick responses! I appreciate the info. Sinaz's idea of rolling it at the same time seems to make sense, especially when it comes to speed. I was worried about bogging down the system, but I also like the idea that even if you rolled low, there was still a chance (however small) that the defender could mess up even worse. How do people handle 1's and 20's on the defence rolls? Can only 20's cancel out 20's? Just curious. 2.) At low levels, the PCs are likely to be very glad to use the vitality system, since it essentially gives them extra hp to work with and very few monsters can deal enough damage to chop through all of their wound points in one lucky critical. At higher levels, however, it can make life a bit more dangerous because there is the possibility that their opponent will get lucky and score a critical and take the PC down in one hit. When the opponent is a dragon who gets five attacks, where even the tertiary attacks deal 1d8+5 and the primary bite can deal 2d8+10 or more (Young Adult Red Dragon: CR 13+1), it only takes one or two lucky blows to take someone down for the count. Granted that the reversal is also true, but most monsters have high constitution scores, and the PCs will be in a lot more fights, so this works against them in the long run. You might allow the PCs to add their level to their wound points to give them a little buffer, but it won't affect things too much. Also, the rules for creatures with regeneration are kind of querky, so you might treat it more like fast healing to simplify things. Since I haven't DMed in a while, and these guys are all pretty new, I might just drop this one. I really like the idea, but there's no need to make things extra complicated when they don't need to. Hmmm... would the Toughness feat add to wounds? Heck... I'll talk it over with them and see what they think. They might go for it even if it is extra complicated. 3.) Every level, characters get 5 + 1/2 level Action Points (AP). Depending on the source, they either get to carry them over, or else they overlap meaning the old ones are wasted (I prefer to use the drain method since it encourages people to use them). Action Points are otherwise nonreplenishable. In d20 Modern, you can only spend 1 AP a round while in Eberron, some effects require multiple AP to be used. When originally introduced in d20 Modern, you could spend 1 AP to add 1d6 to any d20 roll or to activate certain class abilities. At level 8+, you roll 2d6 and apply the highest die, and at 15+ you roll 3d6. UA and Eberron introduced new uses, such as spending an AP to gain another use out of limited abilities such as Smite Evil and Rage, automatically stabalizing, gaining a feat for 1 round, getting an extra attack during a full attack, and other stuff. Each of the above powers cost 1 AP, although some of the Eberron abilities require 2 AP. I like the d20 Modern method. Do you have to declare it before you roll, or is it something you can do after the fact. (There was another game... Marvel? Can't remember... where you declared the use of Karma before the roll). Also, is there any way to get more than 6 extra points, or is that the limit? Thanks again for your help. -Qual
Sinaz 09-01-05, 02:18 PM	Thanks for the quick responses! I appreciate the info. Sinaz's idea of rolling it at the same time seems to make sense, especially when it comes to speed. I was worried about bogging down the system, but I also like the idea that even if you rolled low, there was still a chance (however small) that the defender could mess up even worse. How do people handle 1's and 20's on the defence rolls? Can only 20's cancel out 20's? Just curious. We did it, benefit goes to the defender, so opposing 20's, the defender wins. UNLESS the attacker succeeds a crit, that overrides. We never considered critical defenses or anything. Simple enough.
wwomack 09-01-05, 04:32 PM	I like the d20 Modern method. Do you have to declare it before you roll, or is it something you can do after the fact. (There was another game... Marvel? Can't remember... where you declared the use of Karma before the roll). Also, is there any way to get more than 6 extra points, or is that the limit? -Qual From what I remember of reading over the D20 modern rulebook this is something you do after the roll. You have to declare that you are using an action point after your roll but before the DM tells you the results. Go to the d20modern SRD at http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=d20/article/msrd and read the section on Action Points. It describes it pretty well.
IceFractal 09-01-05, 04:40 PM	You declare action point use after you roll but before the results of the roll ar e announced - which means that you can't roll attack and damage dice at the same time, unfortunately, and would interefere with the "AC roll" mechanics. You might want to just let people use their AP entirely after the roll, and maybe give out a smaller amount. For the defense roll, the way I always used it was that 1s and 20s are auto-fail/succeed on the defense (no critical defense though), but that the attack roll trumps it when there's a tie, as it normally does.
Abulafia 09-01-05, 06:18 PM	I never played with the vitality point system, but I always thought it would devolve into a race for crits -- emphasis on more attacks per round, broadening the crit range, etc.
Xeviat-DM 09-01-05, 10:06 PM	I'm about to start playing with Wound/Vitality points, and this is how we're currently doing it: Characters have HP as normal (we're not calling them vitality), and have WP equal to their Con. Toughness adds +3 WP, while X adds +1 HP per HD (need a name). Critical hits deal WP and HP damage; some weapons deal x2 wound damage (those that used to have x3 multipliers), others deal x3 wound damage (those that used to have x4 multipliers). Damage expressed in extra dice, such as sneak attack, flaming weapons, and others, is not dealt to WP in a crit, they are dealt to HP. There is no limit to how far your WP can go into the negative; we use the saving throw for death varient, except the DC is calculated as 10 + 1/5 damage below 0 wp. As for the others, all players roll the dice is a great system.
Crash01234567890 09-03-05, 12:02 AM	I run vitality/Wp system almost excactly like Xeviat-DM, but I have a minimum you can drop to before your dead. It's kind of comlicated at first but you get used to it eventually. Basically the way it works is you can go up to negative your con, but once your take one point over your con in negatives you die. We also extended disabled from zero to 0-(-Con bonus) in wound points so if you have a Con:20/+5, then you are disavle from 0-(-5) and below that you start dying finally snuffing it at -20. The only other difference is that every extra damage die deals +1 WP damage instead of rolling for it. So a rogue with +3D6 sneak attack would add +3 WPs to his crit damage against whatever he critted.