Weapon levels or classes

[Cilvyn]

Hello,

I'm trying to make a level system that is based on the hundred years' war. The problem i have is that it is hard to make up classes. I was thinking of having no classes at all but only making it able to level up sertain weapon skills. What do you guys think of what is best. is it possible to make classes? or should i make the weapon level system.

Thanx,

Cil

[Spiryt]

I'm not sure what you mean by "weapon level system", but some class system could certainly be arranged.

Exact composition could depend on period of the war, and most importantly on how accurate and realistic you want system to be.

[Cilvyn]

weapon level system:

like the skills in 3.5. You can spend points in sertain weapon skills. This becomes your attack bonus. So there are no classes the only difference is wich weapon you choose.

[Spiryt]

Not bad idea, possibly more interesting than 3.5 weapon feats... :smallyuk:

As for classes, I think they could be useful - possibly not for leveling in them like in 3.5, but to indicate your social status - so general starting possibilities of skills, property, privilege and stuff.

[Altair_the_Vexed]

weapon level system:

like the skills in 3.5. You can spend points in sertain weapon skills. This becomes your attack bonus. So there are no classes the only difference is wich weapon you choose.

This seems like an interesting idea...

You might want to have at least broad classes of character - Academic, Warrior, Noble, or similar sorts of classes - so that you can decide what weapons are class skills, and which are cross-class.

Would you have each weapon as a separate skill, or group them together? For example, maybe you might put bladed weapons together as one skill... or split them up into curved one-handed bladed weapons, straight one-handed bladed weapons, curved two-handed, straight two-handed, and so on... or you might have each individual weapon from the PHB as a separate skill.

[Spiryt]

For example, maybe you might put bladed weapons together as one skill... or split them up into curved one-handed bladed weapons, straight one-handed bladed weapons, curved two-handed, straight two-handed, and so on... or you might have each individual weapon from the PHB as a separate skill.

I think that some grouping would be required, beacuse every single weapons might be too much.

And obviously taking weapons from PHB might not be good idea, although it depends how loosely (or accurately) it's supposed to be based on the hundred years war Europe.

[elliott20]

It might be easier just to use the Riddle of Steel for this instead.

[ericgrau]

Change AC to 13 + misc. instead of 10 + misc. and you're good to go. May want to figure out how to deal with skill focus and so on, otherwise people will simply focus on one weapon and grab the feat. Yet at the same time you need some kind of bonuses to match the normal class features. Or remove them all and leave AC at around 10 + misc.

[Ouranos]

I say weapon groups like Oblivion has, same for armor. Example, swords covers all types of swords. If you want to be more specific, you can do light blades that would cover anything between a shank and a short sword, 1 handed would cover anything below greatsword, then greatblade is anything two handed among the sword family. Same for mace and axe. Armors can be classified as light, medium heavy, or even just light and heavy.

I do suggest SOME sort of class system, perhaps modeled after d20 modern? Simple, generic classes.

Addition: Perhaps even devise a skill-up xp system, requiring you to USE the weapon to gain ranks? Perhaps 10 times X where X is current rank experience to rank it up, and you get, say, 1 point for a failed attack, 2 for succesful, 3 for a crit.

[elliott20]

I actually think that using this system would make skill focus actually WORTH taking for once.

But this also means certain feats like weapon focus will be even more useless than before. I would suggest that in a system like this, you allow people to substitute any weapon focus feat requirements with the skill focus feat instead.

If you really want to get fancy about it, you could also create a "defense" skill which can used to increase your dodge AC bonus. This would clash with armor somewhat though, since I'm not quite sure how you want to handle armor proficiencies. You could make it one of those things where you need at least x-number of points to be proficient and every point you invest after that simply decreases the armor check penalty or some such.

Actually, you can take this one step further and create feats that basically allow for substitution rolls. (i.e. in this particular situation, you can use concentration instead of your combat roll)