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View Full Version : Pathfinder Vow of Poverty (sorta!), an Alternative Wealth System, and Hero Points. [PEACH]



AstralFire
2014-07-20, 03:18 PM
I have a fix for Vow, but it only works with my implementation of hero points; I can't really present it without the help of the other, and I need feedback on both, so...

Here goes! I keep them posted on my wikidot (hero points (http://swords-over-sharn.wikidot.com/hero-points)) (alternative wealth system (http://swords-over-sharn.wikidot.com/alternative-wealth)), but let me format it for here, too.

Hero Points
There are moments in any struggle that influence the outcome. Does the brave warrior lay low the villain before he can finish casting a devastating spell? Does the sly rogue avoid detection as she sneaks into the giant chieftain’s lair? Does the pious cleric finish casting her healing spell before the rain of arrows ends the life of her companions? Just a few die rolls decide each of these critical moments, and while failure is always a possibility, true heroes find a way to succeed, despite the odds. Hero Points represent this potential for greatness. They give heroes the chance to succeed even when the dice turn against them.

Hero Points are primarily awarded to player characters. Some particularly tough NPCs may make use of them from time to time. Temporary hero points are awarded at the start of every session, and if unused by the end of the session, disappear. The DM is the final arbiter on the use of hero points, and in some cases of heroic action or sacrifice, may award players additional points which may be held in reserve. These reserve hero points should be marked on each player's sheet, and are not automatically refunded or lost per session. You can hold a maximum of three reserve hero points at any time.

Players start every session with a certain amount of hero points based on their level. As I have always stressed when dealing with hero points, these rules are highly in flux, so please be patient. That said, I'm not anticipating any more drastic changes along these lines.



Level
Hero Points
Signature Tricks


1 - 4
2
0


5 - 9
4
1


10 - 14
6
2


15 - 19
8
3


20
10
4



Hero Points can be spent at any time and do not require an action to use (although the actions they modify consume part of your character’s turn as normal). You cannot spend more than 1 hero point during a single round of combat; a point used outside of your turn counts against your next turn. You may only use any individual Heroic Trick once per session. Reserve hero points are tracked separately in expenditures from temporary hero points: you may spend one of each a round, and they are not limited by heroic trick uses. Whenever a hero point is spent, it can have any one of the following effects.

Heroic Tricks

Act Out of Turn: You can spend a hero point to take your turn immediately. Treat this as a readied action, moving your initiative to just before the currently acting creature. You may only take a move or a standard action on this turn.
Bonus Boost: If used before a roll is made, a hero point grants you a +8 bonus to any one d20 roll. If used after a roll is made, this bonus is reduced to +4. You can use a hero point to grant this bonus to another character, as long as you are in the same location and your character can reasonably affect the outcome of the roll (such as distracting a monster, shouting words of encouragement, or otherwise aiding another with the check). Hero Points spent to aid another character grant only half the listed bonus (+4 before the roll, +2 after the roll).
Cheat Death: How this plays out is up to the GM, but generally the character is left alive, at zero hit points but stable. For example, a character is about to be slain by a critical hit from an arrow. If the character spends a hero point, the GM decides that the arrow pierced the character’s holy symbol, reducing the damage enough to prevent him from being killed. Most enemies will be fooled and believe the character was slain.
Emulate Feat: This use of a hero point allows you to emulate a feat you normally lack, but meet the requirements for. You typically only possess this feat for one round in combat situations, but more "passive" feats such as Toughness or Weapon Focus may instead be emulated for an entire encounter, at DM's discretion. Emulated feats may not be used to qualify for any other feats or prestige classes. You may not emulate feats from the [Heroic] category.
Extra Action: You can spend a hero point on your turn to gain an additional standard or move action this turn. When used to cast a spell, this spell slot must be of a level equal to or less than half the maximum level you can cast. When used to manifest a power, it is limited to an expenditure equal to or less than half your manifester level in power points.
Focus Fire: Spend a hero point to impose a -4 penalty to one target's saving throw against a single one of your spells or abilities this round.
Got Just the Thing: This use of a hero point allows you to produce one item which could conceivably have fit on your person, and you simply "forgot" that it was there: such as the mithral shirt your uncle gave you to wear underneath your clothes. This item should be worth no more than 500 gp x your character level, and you somehow lose or break the item after the session is over.
Know A Guy Who Knows A Guy: This use of a hero point allows you to suddenly recall a contact who you "forgot" you had, and could potentially help you with your situation. This contact is able to reasonably get to you before the session's end in most cases if she is aware that you need her help, but if there is no way for the help to reasonably arrive, the DM will simply refund this point.
Recall: You can spend a hero point to recall a spell you have already cast or to gain another use of a special ability that is otherwise limited. This should only be used on spells and abilities possessed by your character that recharge on a daily basis.
Reroll: You may spend a hero point to reroll any one d20 roll you just made, or a d20 roll that was made in reaction to something you did (such as a saving throw against your spell or ability). The character rerolling must take the results of the second roll, even if it is worse.
Second Wind: Immediately regain half of your maximum hit points.
Shake It Off: You can spend a hero point to remove all conditions which would ordinarily wear off in a matter of time expressed in rounds, or by the end of the encounter. You also remove any sort of compulsion effect on you. Penalties which are not conditions are not removed. You can use Shake It Off even if you are unconscious or mind controlled.
Sudden Defense: A hero point can grant you a +8 bonus to your armor class against all attacks from a single foe for one round. Even if the attacks still hit, you take half the effect you normally would have, if the effect can be reasonably "halved" or otherwise reduced, like some of the higher fear conditions. If an effect cannot be halved, such as the deafness condition or the effect of dominate monster, it simply does not take effect. This does not remove or affect pre-existing conditions, nor those induced by a different foe. Calculate all halving after the foe in question has finished their round. The following conditions have lower states which are appropriate:



Condition
Hero Points


Bleed
Removed


Blinded
Dazzled


Broken
Removed


Confused
Dazed


Dazed
Staggered


Dazzled
Removed


Dead
Removed. Unless from damage. Then you got a problem.


Deafened
Removed


Disabled
Removed, unless from damage.


Dying
Stabilized


Energy Drained
Half negative levels, rounded down (minimum 1)


Entangled
Removed


Exhausted
Fatigued


Fascinated
Removed


Fatigued
Removed


Flat-Footed
Removed


Frightened
Shaken


Grappled
Entangled (1 round)


Helpless
Stunned


Incorporeal
Removed


Invisible
Removed


Nauseated
Sickened


Panicked
Frightened


Paralyzed
Stunned


Petrified
Stunned


Pinned
Grappled


Prone
Removed


Shaken
Removed


Sickened
Removed


Stable
Uh... Dying...?


Staggered
Removed, unless from damage.


Stunned
Dazed


Unconscious
Staggered, unless from damage.



Followers, Etc: As an immediate action, you may grant an animal companion, familiar, special mount, cohort, or follower one hero point which it must spend within the next round. The NPC benefits from your signature tricks and counts against your limit on number of times you can perform a heroic trick. For example, if you have the ability to use Reroll twice in one session and your cohort uses Reroll, you may only use the Reroll trick once more this session. This can be used with basically any NPC that you get as a class feature or feat.

Special Tricks: You can petition the GM to allow a hero point to be used to attempt nearly anything that would normally be almost impossible. Such uses are not guaranteed and should be considered carefully by the GM. Possibilities include casting a single spell that is one level higher than you could normally cast (or a 1st-level spell if you are not a spellcaster), making an attack that blinds a foe or bypasses its damage reduction entirely, or attempting to use Diplomacy to convince a raging dragon to give up its attack. Regardless of the desired action, the attempt should be accompanied by a difficult check or penalty on the attack roll. No additional hero points may be spent on such an attempt, either by the character or her allies.

Signature Tricks
Beginning at 5th level, a player may designate one heroic trick as a "signature trick." Although you can normally perform any individual heroic trick only once per session, signature tricks may be performed an additional time (or more, depending.) Signature tricks should be marked on the character sheet under feats. Choose one heroic trick that you wish to perform an additional time per session: characters which frequently find themselves on the front lines may wish to choose a heroic trick such as Sudden Defense, while those frequently curse their dice may wish to choose the ability to reroll. Signature tricks still cost a hero point to perform.

At level 10, and every 5 levels afterwards, the player gains an additional signature trick; she may assign this to her previous signature trick, allowing her to use it up to three or four times per session, or she may assign this to a different heroic trick.

If you choose Emulate Feat as a signature trick, you must specify a particular feat category, such as [Combat] or [Metamagic]; [General] is not a valid category, although you may choose an individual feat in the [General] category for that purpose, such as Skill Focus. Thus, Signature Trick (Metamagic) would allow you to emulate any metamagic feat once per session, without expending your use of Emulate Feat for the session.

Alternative Wealth System next post.

New Feat
I actually have quite a few heroic feats, but this one is the most pertinent to the AWS.

Company of Heroes [Heroic]
Benefit: Pick one of the following: a cohort, a group of followers (as a shared pool), an animal companion, a familiar, or a special mount. This group now gains a number of temporary hero points per session equal to half your amount. If you chose a group of followers, they are limited to spending one hero point per round among themselves collectively.
Special: You may take this feat multiple times; each time, you select a new type of NPC companion to benefit.

AstralFire
2014-07-20, 03:34 PM
Overview

In D&D 3.5, there was a feat called "Vow of Poverty", which shared some notions (but no mechanics) with the Monk Vow of the same name in Pathfinder. There were a lot of mechanical problems with it: only humans could get it at first level without houserules, and they had to give up two precious feats to do so; also, the characters who most aesthetically fit the notion were the worst off from it. There were a lot of conceptual problems with it: by eschewing magic items, you ended up basically getting a bunch of built-in magic items; the effect of being poor was to become obviously superhuman. It was also limited to people who were shining beacons of goodness in an evil world.

I like the general concept of the Vow of Poverty as a tool to enable characters who don't have more gadgets than Batman and Iron Man, and therefore provide a more sharp conceptual difference between those who rely entirely on their inner skills versus those who use the most advanced tools of their craft. However, I also like characters to occasionally enjoy receiving some bit of rare treasure. Basically, the goal is to strike a balance somewhere between Merry and Pippin or being a raider from World of Warcraft.

Partaking in the alternative wealth system does not prevent you from earning or keeping money, although characters may decide as a point of flavor that they have surrendered all money. (A monk with Vow of Poverty that also takes the Alternative Wealth system only gains half the usual benefit he would gain from Vow of Poverty.) You may not elect to follow the Alternative Wealth Rules until you have reached level 4.

Benefits



Char. Lvl
Heroic Bonus
Special Tricks
Bonus Feats
HP per HD
Hero Points
Sign. Tricks


1
0
-
-
-
0
0


2
0
-
-
-
0
0


3
0
-
-
-
0
0


4
+1
-
1
-
0
0


5
+1
Aligned Strikes
-
-
0
1


6
+1
-
1
1
1
1


7
+1
-
-
1
1
1


8
+2
Wing Clip
1
1
1
2


9
+2
-
-
1
1
2


10
+2
-
1
2
1
2


11
+2
Lasting Heroism
-
2
1
3


12
+3
-
1
2
1
3


13
+3
-
-
2
2
3


14
+3
Harrier
1
3
2
4


15
+4
-
-
3
2
4


16
+4
-
1
3
2
4


17
+4
Champion
-
3
2
5


18
+5
-
1
4
2
5


19
+5
-
-
4
2
5


20
+6
Mortal Exemplar
1
4
3
6




Heroic Bonus: You gain the listed untyped bonus to your armor class, attack rolls, damage rolls, saves, trained skill rolls, and initiative checks. Double this value's bonus to your armor class if you wield a shield, and add 50% to the damage bonus when wielding a melee weapon in two hands, with the exception of light weapons. Finally, add 67% of this value as a bonus to the difficulty class of any saves your spells, powers and abilities ask for; as always, round down to the nearest integer, minimum value of 1. This value increases as you level.
Bonus Feats: You gain an additional bonus feat every even level, beginning at level 4.
Aligned Strikes: Beginning at 5th level, as long as you have at least one hero point remaining, your weapons share your alignment for the purposes of overcoming damage reduction. Spells you cast that deal damage to someone of an opposed alignment result in part from sacred power, and ignore half of energy resistance and immunity; this stacks with any natural characteristic of the spell. You can spend one hero point to have all of your attacks and spells ignore any source of damage reduction or energy resistance for one round. If you are neutral on one or both alignment axes, you may choose an alignment on that axis to imitate.
Signature Tricks: At 5th level, you gain an additional signature trick. You gain one more for every 3 levels that you possess.
Additional HP: Beginning at 6th level, you gain the listed value of additional health per level you possess. This value increases by 1 every 4 levels.
Hero Points: From 6th level onwards, you gain an additional hero point per session. This value increases by 1 every 7 levels.
Wing Clip: At 8th level, you gain this heroic trick, enabling you to destabilize enemy targets. By spending a hero point, all damage you deal to a single target is totaled up at the end of the round. This target must make a fly check against the total damage they received from you. If they fail this check, they fall a maximum of 150 feet; if they hit the ground, they end up prone and take falling damage. They are permitted a DC 10 Fly check to avoid taking any falling damage and keep from landing prone. Otherwise, they may attempt a DC 15 Acrobatics skill check to ignore the first 10 feet fallen, although they still end up prone if they take damage from the fall. Wing Clip lasts for 1 minute.
Lasting Heroism: From 11th level, whenever you use the Bonus Boost or Reroll features, you may decide to rely on the trick for all rolls of the same category for one round. The categories are attack rolls, skill checks, caster level checks, and saving throws. In addition, whenever fighting defensively, using combat expertise, or taking the total defense action, if you use the Sudden Defense heroic trick, you continue to gain the benefit of that heroic trick against one foe every round until you stop fighting in that stance or you use a different heroic trick. You do not need to pay additional hero points or heroic trick usages for subsequent rounds.
Harrier: Upon reaching 14th level, you may spend a hero point to gain a distracting presence. Enemies take a penalty to their concentration checks equal to twice your heroic bonus. This is a mind-affecting effect. When you use Harrier, you may choose to have it work for one round against all visible enemies, or for one minute against a single enemy.
Champion: Upon reaching 17th level, you are a true champion of battle. You may use 2 heroic tricks in one round. You must pay all costs accordingly.
Mortal Exemplar: At 20th level, you can do anything a mortal can do, if you just put your mind to it. You may spend 2 hero points to activate a heroic trick you have already exhausted.


Gaining Treasure
In order for the Alternative Wealth Rules to work, the player must either continue to take in their share of money from an encounter, or must tell the DM they intend to stop taking money, so the GM can adjust income appropriately.

This money can go towards donations, buying mundane equipment, whatever. It can even theoretically go towards magic items, although many magic items do not work properly in the hands of a player with the Alternative Wealth rules. It just cannot, under any circumstances, become a pool for other players, cohorts, or members of the adventuring party to draw from.

Consumable Magic Items

Wands, potions, and scrolls may be purchased as normal; however, scrolls and wands must always be activated with Use Magic Device (even if a spell is on your spell list), and any kind of failure is treated as a natural 1 (requiring a 24 hour delay to try again.) The DC for you to use wands or scrolls increases to 25 + Caster Level. However, you can still attempt to unleash the magic in the item, allowing you to treat it as a normal user would; see the Unleash Magic heroic trick in the next section.

Magic items which grant a character a permanent benefit, like a ring of spell knowledge or a manual of gainful exercise, function as normal.

Other Magic Items

The following rules do not affect magic items that come from the user's own class features (the user's own greater magic weapon spell, a soulknife's mindblade, or a paladin's weapon bond), and at the DM's option, they may not affect an artifact the player is in possession of. They apply to all other magic items, however.


Magic items simply do not grant any bonus to a user's statistic whatsoever. However, magic weapons remain magic for the purpose of overcoming damage reduction.
All enchantments that deal a variable amount of bonus damage only ever deal one damage, and only once a round.
All other enchantments, such as calling or spell storing do not activate normally.
Unleash Magic: You can release the suppression on a specific weapon or armor enchantment, or magic item, but it requires hero points to work. This counts as a heroic trick, and may be selected as a signature trick. Unleashing magic requires an immediate action and costs hero points to activate according to the following chart.
In the case of vorpal, spell storing, or similar enchantments, you may decide to spend these points after you've rolled the attack roll.
A magic item which is use-activated, spell trigger, spell completion, or triggered on attack is only unleashed for one round; there may be some exceptions (for example, any item which grants flight should be counted as a continuous effect). A magic item which grants a continuous effect is unleashed for one minute. You may only have one continuous effect item unleashed at a time.




Enh. Max Bonus
Item Max Price
Hero Point Cost


+5
128,000 GP
1


All
Any
2




Use the enhancement column when dealing with a specific magic weapon or armor enchantment, use the item price column for all other items. You may instead unleash all of a weapon or armor's effects at once according to the "all" entry on the table. This is an exception to the usual restriction of being unable to spend more than one hero point a round.

Epsilon Rose
2014-07-20, 04:15 PM
While the hero point system is moderately interesting, I don't think your alternate wealth system works. Like vanilla VoP, it doesn't really address missing, necessary, abilities. For example you still can't fly and wing clip only works if you can spend a hero point AND do damage to the target. Of course, if you could reliably do damage to the target it's flight wouldn't matter half so much. It's solution to DR is, perhaps, worse. You need to spend a point to make it work for a round, but then it stops. If you haven't made it a signature trick then your SoL next round and, even if you have, you'd still need to burn hero points and give up on using them for anything else that round. In general I think hero points are far to limited and restricted to be used, particularly without a refresh system of some sort. Beyond that, all this fix does is inflate numbers, but not underlying stats :smallconfused:, which wasn't the main problem to begin with.

Overall, I'd recommend looking at fate points and how they're awarded and refreshed to fix the hero points portion of things and I look into giving the VoP portion some continuous abilities that aren't dependant on her points.

AstralFire
2014-07-20, 05:44 PM
While the hero point system is moderately interesting, I don't think your alternate wealth system works. Like vanilla VoP, it doesn't really address missing, necessary, abilities. For example you still can't fly and wing clip only works if you can spend a hero point AND do damage to the target. Of course, if you could reliably do damage to the target it's flight wouldn't matter half so much. It's solution to DR is, perhaps, worse. You need to spend a point to make it work for a round, but then it stops. If you haven't made it a signature trick then your SoL next round and, even if you have, you'd still need to burn hero points and give up on using them for anything else that round. In general I think hero points are far to limited and restricted to be used, particularly without a refresh system of some sort. Beyond that, all this fix does is inflate numbers, but not underlying stats :smallconfused:, which wasn't the main problem to begin with.

Overall, I'd recommend looking at fate points and how they're awarded and refreshed to fix the hero points portion of things and I look into giving the VoP portion some continuous abilities that aren't dependant on her points.

Uh, they *do* have a refresh system, I included that in the hero point system...? They refresh *every session*.

Letting someone fly isn't in the cards and never will be. All I can do is even it up on the numbers and allow utility that doesn't look explicitly supernatural; I don't intend for this to simply become a list of "mandatory magic items which are glued on" other than the necessary bonuses to keep up. I agree on decisive strikes, though; I've changed it to a minute, since it's limited per-target.

Epsilon Rose
2014-07-20, 06:04 PM
Uh, they *do* have a refresh system, I included that in the hero point system...? They refresh *every session*.
Ah, sorry, I should have been clearer when I said that. When I said refresh system I meant something more reliable/faster then per session or per day.


Letting someone fly isn't in the cards and never will be. All I can do is even it up on the numbers and allow utility that doesn't look explicitly supernatural; I don't intend for this to simply become a list of "mandatory magic items which are glued on" other than the necessary bonuses to keep up. I agree on decisive strikes, though; I've changed it to a minute, since it's limited per-target.
Then it will never be enough. D&D and pathfinder are explicitly supernatural games and the way they are balanced assumes certain abilities. This fix doesn't let a character get those abilities, which means it's not going to be balanced. All it does is inflate the numbers, which is actually pretty problematic because one of the abilities it lacks is immunity to mind control. Save or TPK is not a good thing to leave unaddressed.

If you're really hellbent on not having supernatural stuff (which really doesn't make any sense when you stop to think about things), then you're going to need to figure out non-supernatural ways to deal with these problems. Just ignoring them is just going to result in your homebrew getting rejected because it does not work.

AstralFire
2014-07-20, 06:20 PM
Save or dies/sucks/and sucks are not as much an issue; they've all been houseruled to require two saves to succeed, with a one round delay (or one with a one round delay if they previously had none) and the reroll and bonus tricks make it unlikely that both will go through. Refreshes are typically granted in FATE between sessions, with mid-session refreshes occurring rarely per the rules. If you're referring to compel, the closest my model can get is by ad hoc award of reserve hero points, which are also in the system.

Epsilon Rose
2014-07-20, 07:01 PM
Save or dies/sucks/and sucks are not as much an issue; they've all been house ruled to require two saves to succeed, with a one round delay (or one with a one round delay if they previously had none)
This doesn't seem to be part of these rules and was not mentioned, so it doesn't count. You can have whatever house rules you like, but if they're not part of the homebrew on review I can't and won't take them into account.

and the reroll and bonus tricks make it unlikely that both will go through.
Tricks can only be used once per encounter, unless you make them a signature trick, and you can only use one per round, meaning that they are no where near enough to serve for such a crucial defense.


Refreshes are typically granted in FATE between sessions, with mid-session refreshes occurring rarely per the rules. If you're referring to compel, the closest my model can get is by ad hoc award of reserve hero points, which are also in the system.
I was, indeed, talking about compels. The important difference between compels and your adhoc points are that a player knows, and has some control over, what they need to do to get them. Without that sort of clarity, the mechanic is not well defined enough to be of use. It's a nice bonus, like the DM fudging a roll so the PCs can do something cool, not a reliable thing to balance around.

AstralFire
2014-07-20, 07:12 PM
This doesn't seem to be part of these rules and was not mentioned, so it doesn't count. You can have whatever house rules you like, but if they're not part of the homebrew on review I can't and won't take them into account.

Tricks can only be used once per encounter, unless you make them a signature trick, and you can only use one per round, meaning that they are no where near enough to serve for such a crucial defense.


I was, indeed, talking about compels. The important difference between compels and your adhoc points are that a player knows, and has some control over, what they need to do to get them. Without that sort of clarity, the mechanic is not well defined enough to be of use. It's a nice bonus, like the DM fudging a roll so the PCs can do something cool, not a reliable thing to balance around.

The first is a fair point, but similarly, I'd rather stick to specific rather than broad criticisms which don't really address my system. Fixing save or dies is a greater system issue, so it wasn't particularly the point; items of mind blank are an item-based bandaid to the terrible balance situation. I appreciated your criticisms of decisive strike, for example, and made some changes to fix the issue.

By the time an enemy is throwing multiple save or dies at you, you likely possess around 4 to 6 hero points, with 2 or 3 signature tricks. You have a good chance of taking Iron Will or Great Fortitude with the absurd amount of feats you have access to, and you also have Sudden Defense which reduces an incoming condition, and Shake It Off to remove several of them. That's four possible defenses, any one of which could be your signature trick so that you can do it more often. If multiple enemy casters are focusing on you at once, you're going to be hosed even with items unless you happen to be immune to the same trick that they're all carrying.

With regards to compels - so far, in my testing, I haven't seen players actually run out of hero points at higher levels (when you need item-based defenses the most) - heroic tricks are a bigger limiting factor than the points.

AstralFire
2014-07-21, 03:42 PM
Some changes from playtesting/deeper thinking last night:

- Improved decisive strikes further to aligned strikes as far as bypassing certain types of DR goes. Weapon material DR can still be bypassed easily, because you honestly don't have a lot else to spend your money on. Back to requiring one point/round to ignore any type of DR regardless of rules. Remember, goal is to reduce item presence, not to remove it entirely, unlike actual VoP.
- Lasting Heroism makes bypassing repeated saving throws easier. Possibly too easy. Just working on theory there, the character I used to test last night didn't get a lot of saving throws forced on her.
- Mortal Exemplar slightly increases the risk/reward, as does Champion, because it is kind of too hard to actually run out of straight-up hero points once you're in the third level tier, IMX.