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2012-08-27, 04:29 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Oct 2008
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- Seventh star to the right
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Attempt at realistic 3.5 (need opinions)
Hey there!
My friend and I started working on a rule set for more realistic, low magic, D&D combat. Because we felt that after a certain point in the game, players simply become too powerful and can solve most problems with their brute force...
The point of this homebrew is to make the campaigns complicated with simple things even at higher levels, forcing players to use their imagination to solve problems instead of just slashing through everything.
So we are looking for help or just opinions for these rules, and feel free to test them out for yourselves
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Hit Points
Constitution mod + Base Hit die (of strongest class) + Fortitude + 1hp/level
IMPORTANT - your health points do not increase upon leveling up! Except from increased fortitude and 1 Hp per level! Its the base of these rules, making the game more dangerous, and pushing players to use skills rather than combat sometimes. Because a town guard will always be a threat to you... Everything else is gained as normal.
AC
Unearthed arcana, page 110
You can read it more about AC in this version on that page, but in short it goes like this:
Armor gives damage raduction, and lesser AC
Every class gets bonus to ac depending on the class chosen (we could use help about multiclassing on this one).
For example lvl 1 fighter gets +6 to AC, barbarian +4, bard +3, +2 are those that dont have armor proficency (this scales due to level)
Or simply what Yitzi linked:
DMG system
Every hit has chance to hit certain part of the body. After rolling for attack, if its succesful roll on the table below and according to it deal damage.
%
01-50 - Torso hit - normal damage
51-63 - Right arm - if minimum of 5 dmg has been dealt, arm cannot be used(drop anything in hand)/half damage
64-75 – Left arm - if minimum of 5 dmg has been dealt, arm cannot be used(drop anything in hand)/half damage
76-83 – Right leg - if minimum of 5 dmg has been dealt, movement is halved/half damage
84-90 – left leg - if minimum of 5 dmg has been dealt, movement halved(both legs hit, must go prone)/half damage
91-100 – Head - double damage
Damage conversion rule - You convert the amount of damage taken from a single hit to non-lethal equal to your armor value.
Example - if character is wearing breastplate (+3 to AC and DR 2/- with the UA rules used) and takes 10 damage, he would first subtract the DR that means he gets 8 damage, and converts 3 damage to non-lethal. Resulting in 3 non-lethal and 5 lethal damage.
CRITICAL HIT system
You score a critical hti following the normal rules for crits.
But, when a critical hit is confirmed you roll on this table for additional effects.
SHIELD- too overpowered and unnecessary
When shot by normal sized missle attacks shields grant concealment in addition to armor bonus:
Buckler – 10%
Light shield – 20%
Medium shield – 40 %
Tower shield – 70%
PARRY
Insted of using attack of oppertunity in the round you can parry an incoming attack. Roll against opponents attack roll, if same or higher - attack is ignored. This rule does not apply for a natural 20. Rules or feats that grant you additional attacks of opportunity grant additional parry attemts.
Modifiers:
Attacked uses bigger weapon -4 to parry
Attacker uses two-handed weapon -4 to parry
(edit: we forgot to add this crucial part) In addition, each parry attempt after the first suffers a cumulative -4 to roll, until the beginning of your next turn.Last edited by PrGo; 2012-08-28 at 07:30 AM.
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2012-08-27, 05:32 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Aug 2008
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- Midwest, not Middle East
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Re: Attempt at realistic 3.5 (need opinions)
Have you looked at e6? It reduces the 'superhuman' part of D&D by cutting it out entirely. Levels (mostly) stop at level 6. After that you get feats every 5000 XP. Google knows a lot more about it.
A level 1 fighter has AC 18 at first level with breastplate, heavy shield, and +1 from dex. With your system, a level 1 fighter in the same gear has AC 22 and DR 2/- as well as a 40% chance to ignore ranged attacks. This is a significant boost in low level defense... for the fighter. A barbarian with the same gear has 20 AC, but rage and 2 more hp. I'm not willing to do the math to show if this is good or bad, but it does make class levels much more important, and might therefore make monsters less threatening. Monsters get a small change from Armor as DR, but a hill giant compared to a hill giant with a level of fighter is a significant difference.
In general, PCs get attacked more in a campaign than any individual monster. This makes debilitating crits worse for PCs than for monsters. Aiming for the arm seems like the pro move here, why is the location damaged random rather than a GURPS system? Well, because called shots in D&D cause other problems.
These changes make defensive fighting easier, but they also significantly reduce HP. I'm not sure whether that is more realistic or not, but I don't see how these changes make the game more fun. If they work for you, go for it.
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2012-08-27, 05:57 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Oct 2008
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- Seventh star to the right
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Re: Attempt at realistic 3.5 (need opinions)
Yeah, we've seen it. That's an option, but that doesn't change the combat system very much, and we'd like to try a different one while still playing D&D, therefore this thread.
We'll have to edit the health and AC of monsters we fight one way or another, so that's not much of an issue. Though, you point out a good thing about concealment and shields, making them way more overpowered than we planned. I guess we can live without that concealment.
Yeah, another good point. Though that wasn't much of an issue in our earlier games with that table, simply because we found it too fun. And the debilitating consequences make the characters more interesting, and give them additional individual tasks to find specific healers for that conditions.
While some people don't find that fun, we do.
It makes it more realistic, since every hit taken is a serious thing, not a flesh wound like in normal D&D, forcing us to find innovative ways to fight and not just charge headlong into the fray like we usually do.
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2012-08-27, 06:03 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Sep 2009
Re: Attempt at realistic 3.5 (need opinions)
What does "fortitude" mean there? And be aware that monsters will need to be heavily reworked if you do this. So will character abilities, as otherwise you will end up with an extremely bad case of rocket tag.
ACArmor gives damage raduction, and lesser AC
Every class gets bonus to ac depending on the class chosen (we could use help about multiclassing on this one).
For example lvl 1 fighter gets +6 to AC, barbarian +4, bard +3, +2 are those that dont have armor proficency (this scales due to level)[/quote]
So this plus this. Should work.
Every hit has chance to hit certain part of the body. After rolling for attack, if its succesful roll on the table below and according to it deal damage.
%
01-50 - Torso hit - normal damage
51-63 - Right arm - if minimum of 5 dmg has been dealt, arm cannot be used(drop anything in hand)/half damage
64-75 – Left arm - if minimum of 5 dmg has been dealt, arm cannot be used(drop anything in hand)/half damage
76-83 – Right leg - if minimum of 5 dmg has been dealt, movement is halved/half damage
84-90 – left leg - if minimum of 5 dmg has been dealt, movement halved(both legs hit, must go prone)/half damage
91-100 – Head - double damage
Damage conversion rule - You convert the amount of damage taken from a single hit to non-lethal equal to your armor value.
Example - if character is wearing breastplate (+3 to AC and DR 2/- with the UA rules used) and takes 10 damage, he would first subtract the DR that means he gets 8 damage, and converts 3 damage to non-lethal. Resulting in 3 non-lethal and 5 lethal damage.
CRITICAL HIT system
Your approach is going to make it way too complicated and slow.
When shot by normal sized missle attacks shields grant concealment in addition to armor bonus:
Buckler – 10%
Light shield – 20%
Medium shield – 40 %
Tower shield – 70%
Insted of using attack of oppertunity in the round you can parry an incoming attack. Roll against opponents attack roll, if same or higher - attack is ignored. This rule does not apply for a natural 20. Rules or feats that grant you additional attacks of opportunity grant additional parry attemts.
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2012-08-27, 06:07 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Oct 2008
- Location
- Seventh star to the right
- Gender
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2012-08-27, 06:44 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Oct 2006
- Location
- Pittsburgh, PA
- Gender
Re: Attempt at realistic 3.5 (need opinions)
If you're going to drop HP so much, magic becomes even more dominant. The health and armor differences are even less pronounced, as one good hit will kill either character, but now evocation spells become save-or-dies... or even save-and-still-dies. A level 10 fighter might have 32 health (5 con mod + 10 hd + 7 + 10), while a fireball from a level 10 wizard will do, on average, 35 damage.
Hill Giant Games
I make indie gaming books for you!Spoiler
STaRS: A non-narrativeist, generic rules-light system.
Grod's Guide to Greatness, 2e: A big book of player options for 5e.
Grod's Grimoire of the Grotesque: An even bigger book of variant and expanded rules for 5e.
Giants and Graveyards: My collected 3.5 class fixes and more.
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2012-08-27, 06:58 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Oct 2008
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- Seventh star to the right
- Gender
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2012-08-27, 07:27 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Oct 2006
- Location
- Pittsburgh, PA
- Gender
Re: Attempt at realistic 3.5 (need opinions)
Hill Giant Games
I make indie gaming books for you!Spoiler
STaRS: A non-narrativeist, generic rules-light system.
Grod's Guide to Greatness, 2e: A big book of player options for 5e.
Grod's Grimoire of the Grotesque: An even bigger book of variant and expanded rules for 5e.
Giants and Graveyards: My collected 3.5 class fixes and more.
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2012-08-27, 10:21 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jul 2005
- Gender
Re: Attempt at realistic 3.5 (need opinions)
I think that your ideas on hit points and bodily injury are better addressed by the Wound/Vitality Points variant from UA. It makes the distinction between bodily injury and simply getting tired in a fight, and it also forces anyone taking an injury to save against minor (but temporary) penalties, which is pretty close to what you'd see from injuries in a standard swashbuckling film. This variant also lets you leave DR and AC untouched. http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/ad...oundPoints.htm
Also, your ideas for low hit points don't carry well into high levels (even without magic warriors have huge flat bonuses to their attacks). It might work for E6. The parry variant is interesting at low levels, and works well with the low hit point pool, but I think it makes Dexterity an obscenely important attribute (thanks to Conbat Reflexes).
The random crits are fine, though I don't like them myself.
You say you want a low magic setup, and a lot of your complaints seem aimed at high-level play. Have you considered playing E6? http://www.enworld.org/forum/general...nside-d-d.htmlSorry, I see this has already been suggested. I agree, you should try E6 and see if it does what you want. It's less drastic than what you're proposing.Last edited by Thomar_of_Uointer; 2012-08-27 at 10:57 PM.
I make games.
"...I worry that modern gaming is gradually shrinking the wide spectrum of gameplay mechanics into a single narrow red bar with "KILL" written on it sideways. Exploration, navigation, puzzles, platforming, all gradually shrinking away until only one thing remains, being taken by the hand from room to room, moving on only when nothing remains alive in each one." - Yhatzee Crosshaw
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2012-08-28, 06:31 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Oct 2008
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- Seventh star to the right
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Re: Attempt at realistic 3.5 (need opinions)
We didn't like that idea so we didn't read much about it, but seeing as some people suggest it, I'll read it, then update the post accordingly.
Yeah, I guess it really would work mostly with E6. Either that, or we'd have to find a way to re balance it in other ways.
Anyways, thanks for the insightful response.Last edited by PrGo; 2012-08-28 at 06:32 AM.
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2012-08-28, 09:46 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Sep 2009
Re: Attempt at realistic 3.5 (need opinions)
In that case, it's probably better to just make it the total Fortitude bonus, and remove CON from being directly in the equation. (So you get base hit die plus Fort bonus plus character level; CON affects your Fort bonus and therefore your character level.)
As for the multiclassing issue, just say you can only get the +2 for a good save once. While you're at it, consider just using partial bonuses (1/2 for each level of a good-save class, 1/3 for each level of a poor-save class) and rounding down.