[D20 Legends Project] Ashiel's Crunchy but Approachable D20

[Lemmy]

Not to mention any chimp is much stronger than most humans, but most humans are at least twice as big as your average chimp.

[Klara Meison]

I'd rather not venture into the realm of called shots honestly. I've never seen that road end up anywhere good. The idea of having supersized creatures statted out as a sort of multi-creature encounter was a mechanical idea to kind of draw attention to the scale and epicness of such creatures. Though as you point out with things like pixies vs humans, perhaps that wouldn't be the right way to go with it. I will admit that it does draw some inspiration from things like Dungeons & Dragons: The Tower of Doom, Dungeons & Dragons: Shadows over Mystara, and Dragon's Crown. The thought of facing a creature so massive and powerful that each of its limbs was an encounter unto itself seemed pretty appealing.

There will be no size limitations on combat maneuvers. If you can beat the DC, you can do it. That does mean that with enough progress a kobold could suplex and elephant but IMHO that's a good thing. If your kobold has reached a level of strength and skill that he can suplex an elephant, that only draws more attention to just how awesome that kobold is compared to other kobolds.

Otherwise, small & medium will probably remain much the same. I'm very likely going to need to find a different naming convention for size categories though. I've been thinking of just assigning a number to size categories, which would allow more granularity, especially post-colossal. If we did something like that, it would look something like this.

• Fine = Size 1
• Diminutive = Size 2
• Tiny = Size 3
• Small = Size 4
• Medium = Size 5
• Large = Size 6
• Huge = Size 7
• Gargantuan = Size 8
• Colossal = Size 9
• Colossal+ = Size 10+

It doesn't sound quite as awesome as saying "huge" or "gargantuan" but the creatures in D&D often aren't all that big (colossal creatures don't even live up to the name IMHO) and it's a little more clear cut. A possible way of consolidating some of that would be to include things like Tall 3 or Wide 3, to quickly distinguish the creature's size category and whether they're like giants or tigers.

It's still undecided.

>Though as you point out with things like pixies vs humans, perhaps that wouldn't be the right way to go with it.

There is a radical difference between pixie vs human and human vs titan though, in the fact that titan is, in fact, really goddamn big. That in turn means that there is a lot of space inside the titan, for things like tertiary and quaternary vascular systems, a couple separate brains, etc, etc. So while a human could bleed out if you cut off their leg(or any other part of the body for that matter), a titan would just say "lol", shift some muscles around and cut off blood circulation to that limb, thus negating any point in attacking it (since at that point it would pretty much stop being a part of their body for all intents and purposes)

>I'd rather not venture into the realm of called shots honestly. I've never seen that road end up anywhere good.

You don't like called shots? Why, if I may ask?

[Tels]

>I'dd rather not venture into the realm of called shots honestly. I've never seen that road end up anywhere good.

You don't like called shots? Why, if I may ask?

My group always uses the example of 20 goblins declaring called shot: eye. Only one has to roll a 20 to lodge an arrow in your brain.

[Klara Meison]

My group always uses the example of 20 goblins declaring called shot: eye. Only one has to roll a 20 to lodge an arrow in your brain.

They don't have to have instant death effects. Ones on the SRD give minor penalties and debuffs, which seems like a sensible system to me-strong enough to be attractive, not strong enough to instantly take the target out of action. May even give martials more things to do.

[Lemmy]

Called shots are a cool idea, but they are difficult to balance, I think. It's awesome being able to stab the Beholder's eyes to stop it from using thr AMF, instead of just hitting it and hoping it dies... But how do we stop PCs and NPCs from doing the same to every opponent?

One idea is adding a penalty to attack rolls and saying you have to deal at least X% damage to the creature to get the effect (after all, a minor cut to the leg shouldn't stop legendary warriors from walking).... But like I said, it's difficult to balance.

Another possible option is using the maneuver system. Instead of a Called Shot to the eye, you use Dirty Trick, and instead of a called shot to the leg/wing you use a trip/disrupt flight maneuver, and so on...

The tricky part is making those maneuvers balanced. In 3.X and PF, for example, you're either horrible at maneuvers or so good you can spam it at will and there's nothing your opponent can do about it.

[Klara Meison]

Called shots are a cool idea, but they are difficult to balance, I think. It's awesome being able to stab the Beholder's eyes to stop it from using thr AMF, instead of just hitting it and hoping it dies... But how do we stop PCs and NPCs from doing the same to every opponent?

One idea is adding a penalty to attack rolls and saying you have to deal at least X% damage to the creature to get the effect (after all, a minor cut to the leg shouldn't stop legendary warriors from walking).... But like I said, it's difficult to balance.

Another possible option is using the maneuver system. Instead of a Called Shot to the eye, you use Dirty Trick, and instead of a called shot to the leg/wing you use a trip/disrupt flight maneuver, and so on...

The tricky part is making those maneuvers balanced. In 3.X and PF, for example, you're either horrible at maneuvers or so good you can spam it at will and there's nothing your opponent can do about it.

>But how do we stop PCs and NPCs from doing the same to every opponent?

Why would you want to? It's what you would expect in a real fight, opponents going for the weakpoints of the enemy. You could throw in some sort of BaB-dependant system that would insure 400 goblins wouldn't automactically disable a high-level PC(say, maybe you need to be no more than 3 BaB below the target to be able to make called shots), and an attack penalty insuring it's not the best idea 100% of the time, but other than that...why try to stop the fun?

[Kryzbyn]

I abused hit location in GURPS like crazy. Get a decent weapon skill, then put as many points into hit location as possible. This means you kill most everything you hit in one or two strikes, and doesn't take a lot of effort to get there.
One character was a droid, and had detailed files on the human body. Detailed...files...

[Kryzbyn]

Ash, hadn't you talked about "tiers" in the past? Where characters in a certain level range would get cool stuff for hitting different tiers of progression? Something mythic-like? Or more like mini-capstones?

[Lemmy]

>But how do we stop PCs and NPCs from doing the same to every opponent?

Why would you want to? It's what you would expect in a real fight, opponents going for the weakpoints of the enemy. You could throw in some sort of BaB-dependant system that would insure 400 goblins wouldn't automactically disable a high-level PC(say, maybe you need to be no more than 3 BaB below the target to be able to make called shots), and an attack penalty insuring it's not the best idea 100% of the time, but other than that...why try to stop the fun?

Becaus being blinded/crippled/disabled/whatever by a single roll every fight is not fun? And no game should ever favor realism at the expense of fun.

Besides (and this is something that might be an issue with the magic attack vs resistace mechanics as well), AC/CMD/whatever being a passive defense can be rather frustrating when it fails. I've gotten in discussions with GMs in the past because they wanted to roll my saving throws for me. While it makes no mathematical difference who rolls the die, there's a world of difference in how it feels.

Besides, it's difficult to predict accuracy/AC growth, so it's quite possible Called Shots end up too good or nearly useless.

[PapaQuackers]

That's why I always like to come up with systems for defense that aren't passive. I feel like people want to have a hand in how they defend themselves more than it being boiled down to a number. You get to roll for saves in all the modern dungeons and dragons but you never get to roll to actually defend yourself, which I think makes very little sense considering that in the real world defending yourself is a very active process even while wearing armor. I know realism isn't always to be sought if it siphons away from fun, but I think in this case it's more fun TO roll than not to roll. Just my quick thoughts.

[Ashiel]

>Though as you point out with things like pixies vs humans, perhaps that wouldn't be the right way to go with it.

There is a radical difference between pixie vs human and human vs titan though, in the fact that titan is, in fact, really goddamn big. That in turn means that there is a lot of space inside the titan, for things like tertiary and quaternary vascular systems, a couple separate brains, etc, etc. So while a human could bleed out if you cut off their leg(or any other part of the body for that matter), a titan would just say "lol", shift some muscles around and cut off blood circulation to that limb, thus negating any point in attacking it (since at that point it would pretty much stop being a part of their body for all intents and purposes)

That's a fair point. I'll keep this in mind when deciding whether or not to scrap the idea of giant multi-sectional monsters.

>I'd rather not venture into the realm of called shots honestly. I've never seen that road end up anywhere good.

You don't like called shots? Why, if I may ask?

A few reasons. Every called shot mechanic I've ever seen in any game is either so hard as to be a waste of time, or becomes to easy to exploit. When you're dealing with called shots, you have to decide what the benefits of calling those shots are, and generally they either equate to more raw damage or they equate to nasty status affects or even instant death. All of which can be fairly difficult to balance around, and it can very easily skew the mechanics in favor of certain kinds of builds. In the case of called shots for more damage, that's more or less taken care of with Power Attack-style mechanics (which is a thing that exists naturally as a part of the combat system in d20 legends). Status ailments will primarily be the realm of dirty tricks, special abilities, and things of that nature (though I intend to write options for chaining these things to physical attacks so we might end up with a pseudo-called shot system that lets you take a penalty to attempt a Dirty Trick as part of an attack or something, but in that case it's not a called shot in the traditional hit-location format).

Hit location mechanics in general tend to get really strange anyway when you're fighting things that have strange physiology. A remarkable number of creatures in things like D&D have tons of writhing tentacles, somethin' like thirty eyes, multiple brains and throats, lots of arms, etc. It potentially gets even stranger when you get into shapeshifting things (if you turn into a hydra and one of your heads gets blown to bits, what happens when you turn back? ).

Additionally, I once realized that the very idea of a called shot is mostly redundant in the abstraction of D&D combat. It's generally assumed that you're trying to go for the more lethal means of disabling somebody when you're making an attack roll, and it's assumed your foe is trying to defend against those attacks the best they can, which is why we have random damage rolls and the like. It's assumed that if you can get away with whacking your enemy in the face, you would totally do that. Things like Dirty Trick represent making a conscious choice to try to disable or compromise an opponent's ability to fight (making whacking them easier). We generally assume our warriors are being competent and trying to aim their blows rather than just flailing about wildly. In this context, the notion of called shots doesn't really fit quite as well since it's assumed your hero made the hit that he could at the time.

Likewise, in most every RPG I can recall playing with called shot mechanics, I tended to break them. Even as a kid. I remember playing L5R and as a young bushi, my buddy and I beat an oni we had no business beating because I kept declaring called shots against the oni's head and would get fairly lucky and keep plowing him for huge amounts of damage. In games like Deadlands (I think it uses a near identical system to Savage Worlds as it's made by the same folks), I used to play gunslingers who would just start calling shots on easy to hit body locations because penalties from the condition track didn't stack (so having 5 light wounds spread over your body wasn't as bad as having a medium wound on one part of your body). The result is I tended to resolve combats by ripping a specific limb apart which stacked penalties so rapidly that it was hard to even retaliate (because when you're sitting at a -4 to all your rolls and you're RNG is trying to score 5s with a d6, you are not having a good day).

[Ashiel]

That's why I always like to come up with systems for defense that aren't passive. I feel like people want to have a hand in how they defend themselves more than it being boiled down to a number. You get to roll for saves in all the modern dungeons and dragons but you never get to roll to actually defend yourself, which I think makes very little sense considering that in the real world defending yourself is a very active process even while wearing armor. I know realism isn't always to be sought if it siphons away from fun, but I think in this case it's more fun TO roll than not to roll. Just my quick thoughts.

While repeatedly making lots of opposed rolls can get really bogged down (so I wouldn't want to make it the standard for every attack/defense resolution), I'm a fan of things like the parrying maneuvers from ToB/PoW, and D20-L has a parrying system built into the Fighting Defensively option. Essentially when you're fighting defensively you can reserve attacks in an attempt to parry incoming attacks, giving characters with extra attacks more ways to defend themselves. This actually means that high level martial characters can fight defensively to insulate themselves against tons of mooks rolling for 20s, because if your parry attack exceeds their total roll (critical threat or not) the attack is negated.

[Tels]

That's why I always like to come up with systems for defense that aren't passive. I feel like people want to have a hand in how they defend themselves more than it being boiled down to a number. You get to roll for saves in all the modern dungeons and dragons but you never get to roll to actually defend yourself, which I think makes very little sense considering that in the real world defending yourself is a very active process even while wearing armor. I know realism isn't always to be sought if it siphons away from fun, but I think in this case it's more fun TO roll than not to roll. Just my quick thoughts.

There are only two ways I can think of this working at the moment. There might be a more elegant method out there, but I don't have time, nor the creativity, to think of one.

1) Swap the static and dynamic rolls. Roll for defense vs static attacks. Problem: It does nothing more than swapping the problem. Instead of a static AC of 10 + Bonuses vs an attack of 1d20 + bonuses, you now have a static attack of 10 + bonuses vs a defense of 1d20+bonuses. Sure, it puts defending in the hands of the player, but it also removes the player from attacking. No change is really implemented.

2) Attack and defense become opposed rolls. Benefit: Players feel like they are taking control of their character, even if the odds say they will take more damage doing this, they feel more empowered because a lucky roll could let them dodge an otherwise automatic hit. Problem: It doubles the amount of rolls made in combat. Now instead of rolling 4 attack rolls, there are 4 attack and 4 defense rolls, and you must compare die rolls to see who wins. Also runs a problem of what happens with two natural 20s/natural 1s? What if the Wizard casts flesh to stone and makes a magic attack roll, and the victim makes a magic defense roll? Who wins?

Tangent: This discussion did make me think of a possible alternate version of the dodge feat that can be swapped from a passive, but now scaling, dodge bonus, to an active, variable die roll for a dodge bonus, but only against a single target. Like a +1 dodge, and another +1 dodge at BAB 5, and every 5 BAB increase after, for a 1d4 dodge bonus, that bumps it by one die increase at BAB 6 and every 6 thereafter (d6 at 6, d8 at 12, d10 at 18).

[Kryzbyn]

RE: Tangent

At that point, the dodge feat should be something that's built into all martial classes or else it becomes a "take this feat or fail" non-option.

As someone who played Palladium as his first RPG, I do enjoy the back and forth of active defenses. It's probably why swashbuckler is one of my favorite martials.

[PapaQuackers]

I actually really like the idea of including that dodge variant in all martial classes, I think it's elegant, makes fighters think a bit more doing their turns, and allows you to put the action into your own hands if you should choose to.

Well done accidentally creating something awesome.

[Ashiel]

Tangent: This discussion did make me think of a possible alternate version of the dodge feat that can be swapped from a passive, but now scaling, dodge bonus, to an active, variable die roll for a dodge bonus, but only against a single target. Like a +1 dodge, and another +1 dodge at BAB 5, and every 5 BAB increase after, for a 1d4 dodge bonus, that bumps it by one die increase at BAB 6 and every 6 thereafter (d6 at 6, d8 at 12, d10 at 18).

You very accurately explained the issues with the typical defense roll mechanical paths, so I skipped those (as I don't really have anything to contribute on that ). So onto the focused dodge mechanic.

There's a few reasons why I probably wouldn't implement something quite like this. The first being that it's already possible to keep AC quite relevant as you gain levels, and this would also add additional rolls to combat each round (and you might as well, it's free AC). Now, something that is often overlooked in d20 is that a +1 never stops having the same amount of value. It's always +5% on the RNG. Sure, we have more +1s at high levels than at low levels, but all things being equal, a +1 AC at 1st level means the same as a +1 AC at 20th (an extra +5% evade).

Because of this, I'm quite cautious about adding anything that threatens to throw the RNG into the garbage can, which is the mistake that was made concerning the CMB vs CMD mechanics in Pathfinder. So many things can contribute to CMD that it eventually becomes more or less impossible to succeed at them without using something that smashes the d20 with massive bonuses (such as Smite, Favored Enemy, or Strength Surge). Each round against a specific target your avoidance increases 5-20%, then 5-30%, then 5-40%, then 5-50%, which would means there would need to be some way to catch up in this arms race.

It also favors NPCs more than PCs. In your traditional party (Warrior, Scout, Mage, Support), everything and its neighbor will be using that option against the party's warrior. Likewise, since it applies vs one enemy at a time, it means PCs wouldn't get much mileage out of it (since getting +5-20% evade vs one of twenty kobolds is of questionable value).

It also leads to the situation that a counter-mechanic would need to exist or else two warriors who haven't neglected their AC will just pound on each other all day in a 1v1 scenario, especially at higher levels where the average is +25-30% evade. However, as creatures were forced to spec with the assumption that they would need to be able to fight things using this option, they will utterly crush the RNG vs any creature that hasn't currently selected them as a target.

So while I think it's a novel idea, it adds a lot of rolling to each round of combat and introduces a lot of other stuff that would have to be ironed out and revised just to make the mechanic work nicely with the RNG and the metagame. Because of this, I feel like that time would be better spent fine-tuning some of the existing mechanics (CMB vs CMD and combat maneuvers).

In other news, Combat Maneuvers will be a thing you can just do. They don't provoke attacks.

[Klara Meison]

You very accurately explained the issues with the typical defense roll mechanical paths, so I skipped those (as I don't really have anything to contribute on that ). So onto the focused dodge mechanic.

There's a few reasons why I probably wouldn't implement something quite like this. The first being that it's already possible to keep AC quite relevant as you gain levels, and this would also add additional rolls to combat each round (and you might as well, it's free AC). Now, something that is often overlooked in d20 is that a +1 never stops having the same amount of value. It's always +5% on the RNG. Sure, we have more +1s at high levels than at low levels, but all things being equal, a +1 AC at 1st level means the same as a +1 AC at 20th (an extra +5% evade).

Because of this, I'm quite cautious about adding anything that threatens to throw the RNG into the garbage can, which is the mistake that was made concerning the CMB vs CMD mechanics in Pathfinder. So many things can contribute to CMD that it eventually becomes more or less impossible to succeed at them without using something that smashes the d20 with massive bonuses (such as Smite, Favored Enemy, or Strength Surge). Each round against a specific target your avoidance increases 5-20%, then 5-30%, then 5-40%, then 5-50%, which would means there would need to be some way to catch up in this arms race.

It also favors NPCs more than PCs. In your traditional party (Warrior, Scout, Mage, Support), everything and its neighbor will be using that option against the party's warrior. Likewise, since it applies vs one enemy at a time, it means PCs wouldn't get much mileage out of it (since getting +5-20% evade vs one of twenty kobolds is of questionable value).

It also leads to the situation that a counter-mechanic would need to exist or else two warriors who haven't neglected their AC will just pound on each other all day in a 1v1 scenario, especially at higher levels where the average is +25-30% evade. However, as creatures were forced to spec with the assumption that they would need to be able to fight things using this option, they will utterly crush the RNG vs any creature that hasn't currently selected them as a target.

So while I think it's a novel idea, it adds a lot of rolling to each round of combat and introduces a lot of other stuff that would have to be ironed out and revised just to make the mechanic work nicely with the RNG and the metagame. Because of this, I feel like that time would be better spent fine-tuning some of the existing mechanics (CMB vs CMD and combat maneuvers).

In other news, Combat Maneuvers will be a thing you can just do. They don't provoke attacks.

>In your traditional party (Warrior, Scout, Mage, Support)

That meta is so outdated. Actually, no, it's not outdated, it has never been true in the first place. Embrace the forge of combat age!

Also, I think you missed my question about enviroment-forced saves, like various saves agains heat, cold, and other fun stuff. Who rolls the attack there?

[Ashiel]

>In your traditional party (Warrior, Scout, Mage, Support)

That meta is so outdated. Actually, no, it's not outdated, it has never been true in the first place. Embrace the forge of combat age!

Also, I think you missed my question about enviroment-forced saves, like various saves agains heat, cold, and other fun stuff. Who rolls the attack there?

I'm assuming you mean things like heat dangers from walking around in volcanos, smoke inhalation, and being out in the tundra and such. All that would simply be rolled by the GM. Of course, tables could have the players affected roll the checks if they wanted, since the % chance doesn't change in any case.

[tsj]

How well will existing d20 material like monsters etc translate to this system?

I think some of the ideers behind this sounds good.

I am still searching for the d20 equivalent of "the holy grail".
Currently the closest I have come thus far is to gather tier 3 classes and restrict players to those.

I don't know if this system will fit the bill but the concepts behind it intrigues me.

[Ashiel]

How well will existing d20 material like monsters etc translate to this system?

With 100% honesty, it would probably need some heavy conversion. I've used normal Bestiary / MM monsters during super early drafts on tabletop and while for the most part they are functional, they're clearly not going to be "right" within the system. At the very minimum a lot of feats are going the way of the dodo (things like Power Attack and Deadly Aim aren't feats anymore), and monsters will be built differently.

On the plus side, the framework that I intend to use for monsters would make converting monsters relatively painless.

I think some of the ideers behind this sounds good.

Thanks. It's a work in progress.

I am still searching for the d20 equivalent of "the holy grail".

That's basically why I started this. I've been playing various forms of d20 for ages but just wanted one system that I would run all my games with in the future. So that's why I started working on this.

Currently the closest I have come thus far is to gather tier 3 classes and restrict players to those.

That'd make me super sad. I love playing full casters.

I don't know if this system will fit the bill but the concepts behind it intrigues me.

Glad to hear it. Admittedly updates have been slow but I'm going to be moving to a new job sometime in October, which will hopefully come with a more predictable work schedule, and more money for less hours. All things that would help move this along faster.

[Klara Meison]

I'm assuming you mean things like heat dangers from walking around in volcanos, smoke inhalation, and being out in the tundra and such. All that would simply be rolled by the GM. Of course, tables could have the players affected roll the checks if they wanted, since the % chance doesn't change in any case.

You know, I just had a thought. Since it doesn't matter who rolls the D20, maybe it would make sense to make mechanics different for the GM and players? I.e. players roll attack rolls (when they throw spells around) and saves(when they get hit in the face with a spell), while GM has save DCs (for when his NPCs throw spells at players) and save defences (for when players throw spells at NPCs). This would minimise the number of rolls needed (thus speeding up gameplay), wouldn't complicate the mechanics much, and will let the players have their psychological biases related to "actively" rolling saves and attacks.

If GM needs to adjudicate an NPC vs NPC confrontation, he can decide who rolls the die.

[Snow-blind]

You know, I just had a thought. Since it doesn't matter who rolls the D20 ...

This isn't true for some kinds of reroll mechanics, among other things.

For example...

Misfortune (Ex): At 1st level, as an immediate action, you can force a creature within 30 feet to reroll any one d20 roll that it has just made before the results of the roll are revealed. The creature must take the result of the reroll, even if it’s worse than the original roll. Once a creature has suffered from your misfortune, it cannot be the target of this revelation again for 1 day.

If you want to take such a blaze approach to who is rolling dice, you have to remove anything that even hints at referring to the roller of a roll, or the game just breaks.

There is also the whole "several pairs of different-but-functionally-identical statistics" rules bloat that you need to have if you don't want to put more mental load on the GM by forcing them to calculate statistics on the fly, as well as the "+5 spell attack roll vs DC17 save = +5 saving throw vs DC15 spell" numerical quirk, and there are probably a couple of other problems too that haven't occurred to me yet.

[Klara Meison]

This isn't true for some kinds of reroll mechanics, among other things.

For example...

If you want to take such a blaze approach to who is rolling dice, you have to remove anything that even hints at referring to the roller of a roll, or the game just breaks.

There is also the whole "several pairs of different-but-functionally-identical statistics" rules bloat that you need to have if you don't want to put more mental load on the GM by forcing them to calculate statistics on the fly, as well as the "+5 spell attack roll vs DC17 save = +5 saving throw vs DC15 spell" numerical quirk, and there are probably a couple of other problems too that haven't occurred to me yet.

>reroll any one d20 roll that it has just made before the results of the roll are revealed

That's one silly ability. "Let me switch this random number I don't know for another random number I don't know". It doesn't do anything unless the die is somehow switched for a loaded one in between rolls. Should probably be "after the results of the roll are revealed", so you can at least choose to reroll 20-s and not 1-s.

And it would be a minor change at best. D20 roll is an interraction between two or more creatures, ultimately, and exactly who rolls the die doesn't change the outcome(unless your players are REALLY good at rolling desired numbers on their dice). You'll just need to change "die roll a creature made" to "die roll from a check a creature participated in" or some such.

As for this...

There is also the whole "several pairs of different-but-functionally-identical statistics" rules bloat that you need to have if you don't want to put more mental load on the GM by forcing them to calculate statistics on the fly, as well as the "+5 spell attack roll vs DC17 save = +5 saving throw vs DC15 spell" numerical quirk

+5 SA vs defence 17= DC 15 vs +7 save. I believe that adding or substracting 10 doesn't take much of an effort.

[Ashiel]

You know, I just had a thought. Since it doesn't matter who rolls the D20, maybe it would make sense to make mechanics different for the GM and players? I.e. players roll attack rolls (when they throw spells around) and saves(when they get hit in the face with a spell), while GM has save DCs (for when his NPCs throw spells at players) and save defences (for when players throw spells at NPCs). This would minimise the number of rolls needed (thus speeding up gameplay), wouldn't complicate the mechanics much, and will let the players have their psychological biases related to "actively" rolling saves and attacks.

If GM needs to adjudicate an NPC vs NPC confrontation, he can decide who rolls the die.

It might be a nice optional or house rule but I think it would be overly complicated for many people as a standard. I have heard about some games where GMs have players make all the rolls, which would be pretty similar and achieve much the same effect (albeit the players might be hoping for low rolls when rollin' for NPCs). It would also necessitate adding a big chunk of text to the mechanics explaining when and why you switch the mechanics around, and since it doesn't affect the gameplay overmuch aside from making players roll lots more dice it seems more a novelty.

As noted before, one of the things I'm striving for is to make it a bit easier to pick up the GMing mantle, but changing the mechanics from players to GMs could make becoming a GM a bit more daunting, which is something I'd worry about.

[Mashallah]

For a "martial magic option", I'd suggest something like skill powers in D&D 4e.
They mechanically function the same way as any kind of utility powers, such as those of magic, but are also functionally extension of skills. For example, an acrobatics skill power could let you leap above and beyond what your acrobatics skill would allow you at your current levels, or some even simply give you thematically related abilities which are otherwise impossible with that skill, such as using insight (basically, 4e sense motive) to find an opening in enemy's defences and strike more precisely.
For example:

Spoiler: Prescient Maneuver

Show

I think that skill-themed superpowers could be a decent (and definitely flavourful) alternative to magic.

[Mashallah]

You know, I just had a thought. Since it doesn't matter who rolls the D20, maybe it would make sense to make mechanics different for the GM and players? I.e. players roll attack rolls (when they throw spells around) and saves(when they get hit in the face with a spell), while GM has save DCs (for when his NPCs throw spells at players) and save defences (for when players throw spells at NPCs). This would minimise the number of rolls needed (thus speeding up gameplay), wouldn't complicate the mechanics much, and will let the players have their psychological biases related to "actively" rolling saves and attacks.

If GM needs to adjudicate an NPC vs NPC confrontation, he can decide who rolls the die.

I don't really see the point.
It doesn't matter who rolls the d20 and it looks like pointless mechanical clutter to me. It seems far preferable to use uniform mechanics.

[Snow-blind]

>reroll any one d20 roll that it has just made before the results of the roll are revealed

That's one silly ability. "Let me switch this random number I don't know for another random number I don't know". It doesn't do anything unless the die is somehow switched for a loaded one in between rolls. Should probably be "after the results of the roll are revealed", so you can at least choose to reroll 20-s and not 1-s.

I wouldn't call it silly. Pathfinder is silent on whether or not rolls are public knowledge (note that roll!=check in this case), but abilities like this strongly imply that rolls are public, because that is the only rules consistent handling of rolls that prevents a whole bunch of abilities from being useless. Assuming that rolls are public knowledge, this ability works fine, and simply makes a player guess what the opponent has for a bonus when using the ability.

Oh, and "after the results of the roll are revealed" is when you know whether or not the roll is enough to beat the check, not just when you know what the physical number on the dice is, so if I understand correctly your suggested change is what is already written, and you are unintentionally giving an already powerful ability a huge power up.

For (another) example with similar language to the oracle ability:

Aggression: The preacher may reroll an attack roll that she just made before the results of the roll are revealed. She must take the result of the reroll, even if it’s worse than the original roll.

There are quite a few others that follow the same language. It is basically the standard template for a reroll mechanic.

And it would be a minor change at best. D20 roll is an interraction between two or more creatures, ultimately, and exactly who rolls the die doesn't change the outcome(unless your players are REALLY good at rolling desired numbers on their dice). You'll just need to change "die roll a creature made" to "die roll from a check a creature participated in" or some such.

If you want to be blaze about swapping who rolls the dice on a whim, you need ALL of the mechanics which involve dice (i.e. roughly all of them) to be transparent to who rolls the dice, or to explicitly cover all of the possible die rollers and handle any wonky quirks. The only sane way this can be done is to standardize a small number of rules keywords which explain how to handle dice swapping, but this necessitates that the entire ruleset be warped around this one feature. Is it worth it? I question it strongly.

+5 SA vs defence 17= DC 15 vs +7 save. I believe that adding or substracting 10 doesn't take much of an effort.

No....Bad, Bad Klara! This is exactly the sort of thing where you should be checking your math very closely. You just gave two different mechanical representations with radically different probabilities.

With a Spell attack roll mechanic, the attacker's d20+5 vs the defender's DC17 has a 50% chance of coming out in the attacker's favor. With a saving throw mechanic, the attacker's DC15 vs the defender's d20+7 save has a 35% chance of coming out in the attacker's favor.

In order to convert from "Saving Throw vs DC10+modifiers" to "static saves vs spell attack roll", the static saves need to have a base of DC12+modifiers.

See, this is why I would be very leery about making the GM bounce between two redundant mechanics constantly. Unless they have a very good grip on the numbers, it is going to be very easy for them to screw things up. Especially since this will have to happen in the middle of a gaming session, which isn't an ideal time for maths. A lot less ideal than when you are just writing up a forum post.

[Mashallah]

Yeah, this is clearly a case of "you know what the dice says, but don't yet know what the DC was and thus don't know whether it was a success."

[Lemmy]

Yeah, this is clearly a case of "you know what the dice says, but don't yet know what the DC was and thus don't know whether it was a success."

Which is only slightly better...

Sure one can safely assume they should reroll that 1 or 3, and keep that 18 or 20... But what if I roll a 8 or an 11? "replace an unknown result with another unknown result" is a really dumb mechanic IMO.

[Mashallah]

Which is only slightly better...

Sure one can safely assume they should reroll that 1 or 3, and keep that 18 or 20... But what if I roll a 8 or an 11? "replace an unknown result with another unknown result" is a really dumb mechanic IMO.

If you reroll every result of 10 or less, you get an average of 13.
That is the equivalent of having a +2.5 bonus to the modifier.
If you "roll 2, take best", it is instead equivalent to roughly +5.

Useful either way and clearly numerically expressible.

EDIT: It also makes you nearly immune to nat 1 autofails, which is nice.
EDIT 2: Corrected myself on my "this is equivalent to +5" statement.