Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 stargazer_dragon Aug 17, 2011 1:11:11	Ok so after much debate with my freinds we have decided to revert back to pathfinder/3.5 ruleset, however after playing 4.0 for so long there is a few things we don't whish to give up and a few other old houserules we wanna recreat again. Going to List my idea here and see what other new ides people might give me   Saves : We liked the defence system that 4.0 uses for saves, makes spell casters feal more like they have controle over wether or not there spells work. This said we also decided that Like 4.0 saves should be more comparible to AC. Not nearly as many things that raise defences though. the system we ended up settling on is -- Good saves = 10+ 1/2 HD + Ability Modifier + feats + racial mods and other such junk and (bad Saves are -2 from good ones min 0 base)  casters roll a spell attack roll instead of a DC also which is 1D20 + 1/2 caster lvl + ability modifier + Feats + racial mods and other such stuffs.  did this so casters have more of a fealing that they decided there fate as well as the fact that DC were to low compared to saves later on a lot of the time making spells realy ineffective against monsters.  Mana : anouther spell midification, we ares till working the details out on the exact costs of spells and the exact amount given since some spells even of the same lvl are just notably better while others are notably worse, the working idea right now is that all spells cost 1-10 Mana per spell lvl. Ok so thats not exactly right it costs 10 per spell lvl pluss 0-9 extra (still working on what spells will cost extra) reason for this was to allow spell casters more versatility, to make meta magic feats usable (meta magic feats increase the cost of the spell not the lvl of the spell) and it has allowed low lvl casters to work out nicely Spells per day: yet one more spell alteration we are working on, The worst part of spells is tring to know what it does, the largest problem with this is becouse clerics wizards and other such classes change there spells all the time, as such we changed spells per day to spells known (since we r using mana spells per day was kinda moot anyhows, We gave wizards and clerics and other such classes who previously had only spells per day and gave them 2x that number of spells known. (base spells per day) This made those classes very very versatile however ment that they would be familure with there spells and require looking it up less, which we also resolved by placeing each spell onto a power card similar to 4.0 that details the entire spell in short form with all needed info so never did we have to crack the book open again to know what spells did. Tactical power : this is also a work in progress, the idea though is that fighter powers from 4.0 will be converted into tactical feats in 3.5. There will be 2 sets of tactical feats martial and spell like spell like will be the attacks that are similar to spellls and target non AC defences. while martial will be ones that target Ac. We will be tweaking the powers a TOn and very slowly bringing the favorit ones over, we plan to restrict use of these manuvers by adding tactic points which will work siliar to mana with varius powers costing difrent amounts of tactical points therefor limiting there use. damage for the powers and exact effect is being reworked but over all the hope is to give melee combatents the flare they had in 4.0 without taking away the feal they get in 3.5, since no-one ever forces them to take the feats and feats represent a large power in 3.5 we felt over all it was balenced. We figured every feat they took would grant them extra tactical points pluss they would get a small amount by lvl. again a work in progress Monsters : most of 3.5 monsters we like, there damage was balenced enough HP are also prety good the issue we mainly had was with there defences and AC, that said defences was already fixed leaving AC. for this we plan to rebuild the monsters (or add havok when fealing lazy) so the AC is more comparable to chars attack numbers. basing monsters offf the fighters attack bonuses. Monsters expanded : we plan to add the minion, elite, and solo template types so that we can have monsters of those types, we also plan to add a guidline for brute, skirmisher, lurker and the such and label the monsters by there type also make some new monsters to fill in the roles that are lacking, Basicaly make expanded list of the monsters so they have a larger variety of roles. Mostly this is relivent to sentient races who would activly train difrent styles to combat others with a rounded offence /defence. BAB: we didn't change the lvl classes get new attacks or the difrence betwean primary and secondary attacks we did howver alter BAB for melee classes, and non weapon classes. Basicaly instead of most classes having difrent BAB we devided it into 2 groups, Caster, Non caster . The none casters all use the fighters BAB, Casters all use the wizards BAB, Clerics we concidered a non caster as it's spells wern't damage focused so it required a lot of weapons attacks to allow them to hurt others. So all weapon users use the same BAB however there 2nd 3rd and 4th attacks are not granted based on BAB rather a class feature gives each class there aditional attacks, and each attack is granted at -5 from the previouse one. We however added a fighter feature that changed theres to -2 from the previouse one so they were again more effective, (we did the same to all ofther classes that previously uses the fighters BAB also)  the idea was to bring attack bonus into a more standard  number without taking the feal of being a fighter away from it. We disliked how 4.0 wizards could by default swing a weapon as good as a fighter could. Palyer races: 3 important thing we are working on here, 1 is Racial feats; We want to include a lot more racial feats, basicaly least 3 or 4 per race which for our intention is a lot, these feats however will be detailed in the race section not the feats section for ease of reference, the reason for such brings us to number 2 A LOT more playable races, Like 4.0 we want a lot more variety of player races with little tono lvl adjustement, as such we plan to make a base race set up for as many races as we can by adapting monster races that make sence to be used as a player race, that said the race book will have 2 sections 1 for base races 1 for monster races, each race section will include all the things connected to that race, which brings us to number 3 race powers, one of the things we loved in 4.0 was racial powers, it made races feal more defined which we love having every race add a special feal to the char. that said we want to include as many racial powers as we can, unlike 4.0 though we will base the powers compleatly on the race giving a option to not take the power and gain a more universal benifit instead, thus making it so powers fit the race without concidering pigeon hole effects but only thematical ones yet still offering a viable option for not taking the power if it is of no use to your class so while there were other changes we are working on that I didn't list I was interested in sugestions others might have on houserules / alterations to the pathfinder/3.5 ruleset. Not nessisarily going to use them but hearing the ideas and feadback from others helps us think of what we prefer. The end goal is to basicaly get rid of all out old books into some dark cornor of our closests and use only the new rules we make. The books I can recall that we plan to make are as follows (and before any1 says it yes we know this prodject is tremendouse but we have a ton of the work already done over the cource of our many many years of gaming and it's not just 1 person doing all the work.) Planned books Book of races - will list all the player races devided into 2 catagories, base and mnsterouse. Each race stats will includ RP info, Core stats, Racial feats and weapons/gear, and racial power and a alternative option in case the power sucks for your class. Book of feats - The idea is all feats will be listed here, if it isn't listed here it's not a legal feat, after all we can always add a new feat to the book whenever. Feats will be order by catagory then by A-Z Books of spells - We plan to make 1 book for arcane 1 for devine and 1 for Tactical, we will wrap other spell types into one of the 3 books, will be devided by clss then by catagory, further will be listed in a card format so that it can easaly be copy pasted then printed out and cut out making for a easy method of determaining what spells are cast as well as effect. The goal is to remove the issues involved with using spells and choosting spells. Book of gear - All types of Gear will be listed here with magical gear taking the second half ogf the book. Book of Classes - if it's not here it's not usable presteige classses (and presteige paths) as well as epic paths will be listed in the back of this book, all playable classes will be found here with the exception of advanced classes Book of advanced classes - a lot of these classes will be race classes, these are intended to be used with the gistalt and multiclass options and will be limited to higher power games, the racial classes here will be a way to reach a races full potiential and will be slightly stronger then normal classes even a touch stronger then presteige class. Most race powers and abilities and such for a monsterouse race will be a product of these classes.  A Trolle race would gain it's regeneration from this class for instence, basicaly everything stripped from monsters to remove there EL will be added into classes here.  Templates will also be added to this book. Monster manuals : we plan to add a huge slew of monsters and alter a ton of the others, as such the only way we can effectivlly do so is by making our own MM. the MM will be ordered by CR, then race name a_z within CR groups. each race will have a variety of CR and a averge race CR, the average race CR will be what most members of that race are stated as but a few higher and lower lvl varients will exsist. Again the idea is ease of use. Rules Book - similar to essentials we want all the rules we can scrape together for the game we play to be in a single book organised by front player rules and back DM rules. Entire point of this is to allow anyone to easaly find any rule and this will be the last and proabaly the hardest book to make.
#2 stargazer_dragon Aug 17, 2011 12:26:17	AC / attack bonus is the first thing I like to think further on We added a Inherent Natural AC Bonus of 2 every 3 lvl. This brought the average AC up to the same as the average attack bonus, will post more after play testing. [spoiler=the ground work] So again I want a average player to hit a unarmored (light defence) monster on a 7 and a heavily armored (heavy defence monster) on a 17  With super light defence coming to hit on a 5 or less and super heavy defence hit on 19 or more. so player to hit numbers should be based on 1 per LVl + 5 + 1 per 3 lvl. What I want is for Players to tell me what the chars to hit number are, there chars lvl and where they get there bonus from so I can check to see if on average I am correct, (Only want fighter BAB classes) Desired armor values (for light defence creatures) should be LV      AC bonus        1              +6 2              +7            3              +9 4              +10 5              +11 6              +13 7              +14 8              +15 9              +17 10            +18 11            +19 12            +21 13            +22 14            +23 15            +25 16            +26 17            +27 18            +29 19            +30 20            +31 Charicter AC is the next issue, not counting armor bonus I need to figure out the average unarmored AC bonus. This will let me have a good idea what monsters to hit bonus should look like. My desire is to modify things so players on everage have the same AC as monsters so that they would have the same chance hitting themselves as hitting a monster. Light defence players should have no more then +3 dex bonus since it isn't there focus and on average will have a +2 dex, Players often also have more magical defence so they attribute about +2 Ac from magical effects every 3 lvl. Further players rarely use feats for defence and not a ton of them add to AC so skipping feats. So light defence chars average defence would be +2 Dex +2 Per 3 lvl magical This would give LV      AC bonus        1              +2 2              +2 3              +4 4              +4 5              +4 6              +6 7              +6 8              +6 9              +8 10            +8 11            +8 12            +10 [/sblock]
#3 slobo777a Aug 17, 2011 15:16:04	So again I want a average player to hit a unarmored (light defence) monster on a 7 and a heavily armored (heavy defence monster) on a 17  With super light defence coming to hit on a 5 or less and super heavy defence hit on 19 or more. I missed why you want this large range of chances to hit? Low chances to hit are likely to result in long, frustrating combats, unless you remove something major - for example, the battle grid. That's why old AD&D combats are shorter - needing a 16 to hit is not too tedious if your turn takes 5 seconds, and the whole round just 2 minutes.
#4 stargazer_dragon Aug 18, 2011 11:41:18	A difrence of 10 with 7 being the low and 17 being the very high is not that large of a difrence specialy when you take into concideration that those are averages, it does not account for the extra feats a player might take or the couple extra a fighter gets or buff spells, Th object is that a super heavily armored foe would require a lot of work or the aid of bless and other similar spells, as a basic rule the more armor something has the less damage it does. Though ranged foes are often lightly armored but they do there damage with less risk of being hit. and in the end the reason for the desired difrence is becouse no armor gives a 0 armor bonus and the heaviest armor gives a +10 armor bonus (dragon plate I think it was but there were a few others as well ) So since armor has a scale of 10 monsters should have a scale of 10. I am fully against the idea that everything needs over balenced. anyhows heres the armor sustem we ended up with though it does have a varried AC number still we plan to play test it out a bit. AC = 10 + Dex mod + wis Mod + armor + sheild + enhancement bonuses + other magics (ring of pro, amulet of armor ect) + we added a natural armor bonuses of 2 per 3 lvls We decided on average a 14 was a common stats to be placed (taking into concideration that we use the roll 4 reroll 1 drop the lowest dice method ) so we calculated average armor based on this Wis mod 2 Dex mod 2 Armor 0-10 Sheild 0-3 (sheild users count as super heavy if they are using plate as well) Enhancement bonus avergae of 2 per 3 lvl Natural AC bonus 2 per 3 lvls (we added this to get AC numbers up to about what average to hit numbers were) The dm can then use Magical gear to moderate AC up or down for the party to try to get/keap it within reasonable lvl Next things we are working on are mana points and skills Like 4.0 we plan to remove some skills and combined others, We plan to however include background feats that encompass skills like profession and perform making them more rp effect
#5 stargazer_dragon Aug 18, 2011 15:26:16	skill ranks, We liked the 3.5 way of handling skills however decided to make it slightly less complicated, Players get a number of skills they are trained in, each trained skill gets +5 , they again get to train or further train skills every 5th lvl, thus they can have multiple +5 and a few +10 at 5th lvl all +10 or all +5. This is very similar to the way 3.5 already does skipp points except makes for less changes to the char sheat since bionuses are given only at lvl 5,10,15,20,and every 5 lvl after 20. instead of every lvl. it also reduces the time taken to decided and rounds the bonus out to a solid 5. The idea was to add the ability to deversafy but not require it Also Classes grant a +4 to 2 difrent skills related to there class and races gain a +2 to 2 difrent skills related to there class. We are doing a lot of changes to classes and races that I will address later For skill lists we will porbably use the 4.0 list maybe slightly expanded, Further some of the skills will be required to be put into background skills that will help flesh out a chars background full skill lists not yet availible as were working out the finer details.
#6 rampant Aug 19, 2011 2:30:03	Slow down. You are rushing way too far ahead. You need to consider the system before the exact numbers should even be bothered with. Spells and monster defenses in 3e were incredibly complex and time consuming. Everyone and their dog had energy resistances, damage reductions, regeneration, fast real, spell resist, and could only be killed by purple virgins on the third day of any month not ending in y. If you like 4e monsters maybe it would be best to use that as the base line system, because the monsters seem liketo they will be the hardest and most involved bit to rebalanced.
#7 stargazer_dragon Aug 19, 2011 5:33:22	we are actualy way way further along on the prodject then what I have transfered over here, we have already redone much of the core. We reworked saves and spell attacks Changed AC and BAB Altered the effects of spell resistence (though still working on how it effects non damaging spells we ben thinking a defence bonus) Bunch of other junk, We barrowed heavily from 4.0 for classes and saves but for the most part we liked how 3.5 did the monsters just needed to fix chalenge lvl  ac to hit and a few other stats. In the end monsters have shown to be a easier prodject easaly able to fake it untill we have finished remaking all of them. We just finished a mana system anyhows actualy what I can use help on is SR So far SR will work Like DR and reduce the damage taken from spells, however we can't find a use/proper number for non damaging effects, we figured maybe a +1 save defence per 5 SR given as a situational bonus used against casters
#8 rampant Aug 19, 2011 9:40:25	My advice is to ditch sr completely but have damage reduction apply to spells instead of just gimping weapon users.
#9 rampant Aug 19, 2011 9:40:32	My advice is to ditch sr completely but have damage reduction apply to spells instead of just gimping weapon users.
#10 stargazer_dragon Aug 19, 2011 11:29:27	we kinda liked the ability to make some creatures stronger against weapons while others were stronger against magic. This is what I came up last night for SR (bear in mind all playable races and monsters are getting remade to apply other fixes anyhows so we will make a large number of small fixes, we are also expanding the moster list to include varients of it for minion -elite-& solo where proper and for a slightly expanded lvl varience. Intelligent races who might have classes will have a few right up with classes to represent higher lvl and a template for each monster will exsist representing the lowest stats and lvl possible for the race (not including the minion template) SR grants direct damage reduction against spells, also every 5 SR Reduces the number of rounds a spell effects them by 1 (1 round/minute/ hour whatever time mesurment the spell uses) if this reduces it to or below 0 then the spell simply has no effect. (only works on spells that have a duration) non damaging spells with no duration are not effected by Spell resistence
#11 rampant Aug 19, 2011 11:38:25	Ok a dark elf with 3e sr 15 gets fireballed for 30 damage how much damage would he take under the new system?
#12 stargazer_dragon Aug 19, 2011 11:46:58	15 fire damage Likewise same dark elf hit with a sugestion by a 6th lvl Sorce ((Duration 1 hour/level or until completed )) would have 3 hours removed from the duration Sorce lvl 6 spell lasts 6 hours remove 1 unit per 5 resistence to remove 3units making it last 3 hours instead of 6,  ((though it is possible that SR may need to have a stronger effect on rounds to do much at lvl 15 and 20  since 3-6 units of time isn't nearly that big of a deal, then again how high does damage reduction get at those lvl? ))
#13 slobo777a Aug 19, 2011 11:52:29	OP. your re-design may well include a few good ideas, but so far the posts seem very chaotic, and it is very difficult to tell what you are actually trying to do, other than mix and match some rule sets. Do you have any top-level goals, design principles, or an idea of what the "perfect game" would play like? For instance, if I were to re-visit my old obsessions with game design (I have homebrewed probably 4 or 5 RPG game systems loosely based around existing ones, to the stage where they could be played with my friends), I would probably look at two major things: 1) A framework for non-combat sides of the game that used parallel resources and character build concepts to the combat game (so that non-combat could be played out with more "roll game" to support it). I want something richer, with less entanglement with combat side of game, and better balanced between character builds, than 4E. 2) A combat system which had as much of 4E's rich dynamics as possible, but in which combats were resolved on average 2 or 3 times faster. What are your equivalent points to my (1) and (2)? If you don't some kind of guiding principle to your changes, you will end up with a mish-mash of ideas, some of which might be individually good, but together the whole thing risks being a mess.
#14 stargazer_dragon Aug 19, 2011 12:00:55	while I admit the topics I bring up here are kinda hodge podged and chaotic thats becouse I am mainly bringing up the few things that I randomly run into that I am torn betwean basicaly instead of posting everything and getting all the feadback on areas where others disagree or throw there opinions into I am just posting the parts I actualy want feadback on. As to say if I tossed our class remakes on here then I would need to listen to everyones arguments and comments on something the group are already happy with, if instead I toss on a part of a class we have a hard time deciding on then I just get the feadback for that 1 part.  Now not to say some people like rampart arn't a huge huge helt to me on these forums I also run into people who become problematic (run the topic into a non helpfull argument states as aposed to a helpfull one) so I find it greatly reduces issues if I post only whats relivent to the need if that makes much sence. Pluss posting it all here would be horribly long posts
#15 rampant Aug 19, 2011 13:44:54	Which of course means that we don't have a complete frame of reference.
#16 stargazer_dragon Aug 19, 2011 13:59:27	to post it all here would take the max out many full pages, I do try to give the reliuvent info but admit that I fail sometimes most of the cocepts r 3.5/pathfinder with some 4.0 aspects granted we have also added house rules so guess it is more complicated
#17 stargazer_dragon Aug 19, 2011 16:05:31	I figured out that SR will reduce damage by a amount directly equal to its number so sr 26 reduces magical damage by 26, that said Sr numbers will prob be closer to DR numbers, what we havn't figured out is how to make non damaging spells be effected by SR, so far best sugestion is that non damaging duration spells have there duration reduced by x per y SR Given SR should prob not often be above 26 on the high end 5 per 1 seams perhaps a touch on the weak side perhaps 2/per 1 with Curent SR being brought in line with DR numbers