Dragon Age D&D rules

[kvestori]

(I hope this is in the right forum, I wasn't sure if this belonged to Homebrew Design or the D&D forum. :smallredface:)

I'm running a campaign set in the world of the Dragon Age -game series, using the D&D 3.5 ruleset. To accommodate the setting I've made a number of house rules, from banning all magic & abilities related to the alignments (such as Detect Evil; the DA setting doesn't ontologically work on the basis of alignments, though in our game the characters do have alignments) to using the Unearthed Arcana spellcasting-option of spell points instead of Vancian magic and using alternate racial characteristics for dwarves and elves (without the other races, which aren't included in the setting).

Now I'd like to get a more coherent set of rules for the game, so I ask your help with retooling D&D elements to better fit the setting. Firstly, the Paladin base class needs to be modified to function as the Templars. I'm thinking of cannibalizing non-base classes and prestige classes for relevant mechanics (ie. protection against magic and countermagic). Any suggestions?

Secondly, I'd need to develop the Darkspawn as NPC-races. What do you think, should I just run them as orcs and goblins, or make the effort of developing their own stats for them?

Those are the first questions that come to my mind, but I'm also open for other ideas and/or question should you have them. All help is welcome. :smallsmile:

[Jane_Smith]

http://dungeons.wikia.com/wiki/Mana-Based_Spellcasting_%283.5e_Variant_Rule%29

Id suggest using this for spellcasting.

[Nero24200]

Using 3.5 as a base could be problematic depending on how close you want the mechanics to be to the games. Certain elements (such as druid-esc abilities, "templar" powers etc) would across quite heavily as prestige class territory, clerics wouldn't fit at all, arcane casters would have access to healing spells etc.

I personally think it might be best to start the classes from scratch - Warrior, Rogue and Mage (perhaps using the spell point variant or using a psionic base instead to get the same feel mechanics wise). Using the Generic Classes from Unearthed Arcana might be a start (and can be viewed on the SRD). You could then create various feats to help represent the abilities seen in game (such as a feat tree for templar powers).

As for the Dark Spawn...using orcs and goblins could work. Physically they seem to resemble them and you would only really need to include rules for taint/ability to sense other dark spawn to get them pretty close to how they're depicted.