Domriso's Massive Homebrew Overhaul Compendium

[Domriso]

You never fail to impress.

Why thank you!

However, I can't help but ask, why is all of this context and tier system necessary? Woudn't just saying "it raises this skill to this number, or lowers if made to do so, only the highest counts, and they only affect skill checks, and only while equipped" be easier, or am I missing something?

This one actually comes from some of my work on trying to deconstruct and reconstruct the d20 system into something more like I want. I won't bore you with all the details, but essentially I have turned to the dark side and come to like using 3d6 rather than 1d20 as the basis for most of my rolls, and as such I have redesigned the skill system with this in mind. I designated the different number of skill ranks into tiers, and so I was thinking of that when I was thinking of these variant magical items.

You could certainly simply put it out there that the artifacts simply raise or lower to a certain number, but I like the idea of tiers for aesthetic purposes as well. Raising and lowering to a specific number that correlates with a group of numbers makes me feel that they have a slightly more mystique. Might just be personal preference, but I do enjoy it.

An interesting concept, reminds me of "limit break" from kingdom hearts games. This system would probably be more "will to live" or "well of contained power" based, and might be kind of hard to explain, but balancing shouldn't be too hard. Just lower uses per day, give a few more HP, and balance spells normally. I look forward to this.

I picture this system being something like the limit break, but turned slightly on its head. The idea came to me while playing a flash game, because I thought that the special abilities were able to be used in more rapid succession when I was at lower health. That turned out to not be the case, but it struck a chord with me, so I thought of putting it out here.

If I were to extrapolate more, I feel like this kind of system would actually represent quite a bit of modern fantasy, especially of an anime-style feel, at least in play. When you're healthier, you have to draw up your reserves, then release them to power your attacks, and even at full power, your weaker attacks draw off a lot of your power. But, when reduced to a more damaged state, when everything is starting to look more and more like the end, you can pull off more and more impressive things in repetition.

I'll probably work more with this later. I mostly wanted to put it in writing before I forgot about it. Way too many ideas have been lost that way.