Shouldn't that be Glaive-Guisarmies and Gambesons?

Becs & Corbins.

Ranseurs & Rascals.

Gazebos & Godentags.

What we need is a second hyphenated polearm that starts with G.

Then the abreviated title could be EG&G. (Enhanced...)

Nothing says first edition like hyphenated polearm names.

Quote from: David JohansenWhat we need is a second hyphenated polearm that starts with G.

Then the abreviated title could be EG&G. (Enhanced...)

Nothing says first edition like hyphenated polearm names.

Note that in the original "Strategic Review" article that debuted the "Great Gygax Polearm Fetish", the Glaive-Guisarme had separate stats from the Guisarme-Glaive.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you...

"Enhanced Glaive-Guisarmes & Guisarme-Glaives".

No love for the Bohemian Ear Spoon?

No thanks, I'm more of an Ox Tongue man myself these days.

Seriously though, I'm leaning pretty heavily to Advanced Men & Magic because it refers to book one of the original edition of D&D.  Platemail refers to Chainmail of course, but the game I'm writing isn't strictly a development of that system.  Maybe for a mass combat supplement.

But no, I think the main reason I'm building this is that it's easier than designing my own games.  I'm stuck on the damage system for 100% Fantastic.  I'm just completely unmotivated when it comes to Galaxies In Shadow (Clash would kick my ass if he knew how close to done it is and how little I've done on it lately.)

I just happened to post something on the James Hargrove vs Castles and Crusades thread, and suddenly I realized exactly how I'd set up D&D if it were in my hands.  So I'm writing it up.  I've actually got half a dozen monsters and about a dozen spells done but I want to get a little farther down the road on them before showing them off, just for the sake of consistancy if I decide I need to tweak something.

Well, I'll throw in with the others and say I really like what I see so far.  Far better than my attempts to do much the same thing.

I like your approach to ability scores. You have an actual formula in there, and most normal people will have their ability scores in the 6 to 14 range anyway, so that cuts down on needless complexity. I'm not sure if I prefer this over the way 3e handles ability scores or not, but I am intrigued. I also like your idea of "alignment traits", which is something I was toying with myself. Interesting.

I've always felt alignments are too vague and absolute.  I made it three traits because I wanted it to be impossible to sit on the fence.

Anyhow, I'm over the cold that poleaxed me this week (well, it was more of a bardeche) and I've figured out where to go on the core mechanic.

There isn't one.

There are several resolution methods that have merit in different places.

The most common would be Skill Bonus + Stat Bonus vs Target number in combat.  But also, at times, the target's stat will also serve as a target number.  For instance the target's Wisdom when sneaking up on someone.  Oh, by the way if you backstab someone you get maximum damage directed to physical hitpoints.

But obviously for Stat rolls, that would be not so good.  My six is as good as your 14?  So for one sided stat rolls you'd just roll under on d20 with a circumstance modifier range of roughly 1-10.

What do the Commoner's abilities do?

Maybe equipment is cheaper for Commoners because they're more canny with money? Maybe they bargain as if their Charisma and/or Wisdom were higher than they really are?

Also, are Nobles meant to be courtiers, or knights?

Commoners grow food and produce goods.  If you want to grow food and produce goods or understand the processes involved you'll want some levels in Commoner.  It's mainly there to make a reasonable definition of the power level one might expect a peasant to have.  A tenth level peasant will be at +5 to hit with that felling axe and have 5 more hit dice.  It's  useful information but commoners aren't intended as adventurers.

Nobles are the hereditary warrior class once it's become entrenched by feudalism.  Most serious knights have fewer levels of Noble than Fighter.  Of course, a dashing courtier might have levels in Thief and Noble, a hermetic wizard might have levels in Magic-User, Cleric, and Noble.

One big change I've decided on is 2d6+3 for stats.  WHOA WHAT!  Well, there's already a mechanism in place for stat gains.  And I had some realizations on the core mechanic.  To whit the stat bonus is now stat - 10.  So a 13 gives a +3 and an 18 a +8!  (actually not far from the range of the old 18/00).

This means you can use stats as target numbers.  Want to sneak up on someone?  Sneak level + Dex Bonus vs Target's Wisdom + Level!  It really works well on a lot of levels.

What about the ten point gap?  Well it stops making sense the first time you want to do a stat verses stat contest.  Instead I'm suggesting that mooks be assumed to have straight tens plus their racial modifiers, which means their bonus equals their racial bonus.  Nice huh?

I'm figuring on varying spells by their tactical roles, magic missile is a mook killer, fireball is an indescriminate killer, lightning bolt is for really tough targets (and hence the only stackable damage spell), but meteor swarm, for instance, is just a higher level fireball or stacked fireballs cast at the same time.  I need to get to work on it.  I'm a fair way in on magic but the holidays have slowed me down a bit.

I'm trying to decide whether it's better for a fifth level mage to be able to cast a third level spell in keeping with the D&D roots or not.

If I went with the idea that you could cast a spell of your level or less for free and essentially reserved energy for higher level spells, I'd need to make the spells have higher levels than they originally did.

Quote from: David JohansenI'm figuring on varying spells by their tactical roles, magic missile is a mook killer, fireball is an indescriminate killer, lightning bolt is for really tough targets (and hence the only stackable damage spell), but meteor swarm, for instance, is just a higher level fireball or stacked fireballs cast at the same time.  I need to get to work on it.  I'm a fair way in on magic but the holidays have slowed me down a bit.

I'm trying to decide whether it's better for a fifth level mage to be able to cast a third level spell in keeping with the D&D roots or not.

If I went with the idea that you could cast a spell of your level or less for free and essentially reserved energy for higher level spells, I'd need to make the spells have higher levels than they originally did.

This is not a fully formed idea but something I want to toss out for you to think about...

One of the things that makes magic not feel like "magic" in my opinion is when it's too predictable or reliable and not adjustable enough, and I think you are on to something with your tactical roles idea.

Suppose the caster's level essentially translates into dice of damage (or healing or environmental change or number of people effected for things like teleports), so that a first level Magic User does 1d6, a second level Magic User does 2d6, etc.  That's base.  And suppose the MU needs to make some sort of easy casting check to do that damage against a single target at reasonable range with a basic Saving Throw.

Now, allow the Magic User to change the Damage, Casting Roll, Tactical Role (e.g., additional targets, stackable damage, special effects, etc.), and Saving Throws (including a reduction to No Save) by trading them off against each other.  

For example, a 5th level magic user wanting to do 6d6 of damage may need to roll an 8+ on a d20 (5+ for 5d6) and 13+ to get 7d6 of damage.  If they want to affect more than one target, they can lose 1d6 of damage per additional target in an adjacent spot (e.g., 2 targets for 4d6, 3 targets for 3d6, etc.) or increase the Casting Difficulty or maybe even making the Saving Throw easier for the targets or the Casting Roll harder.  By adjusting those 4 variables against each other (maybe more if you can think of more of them), you could get a pretty wide variety of effects.  

The main problem here is to avoid this becoming as unwieldy as the Hero System and one way to mitigate the problem of in-play number crunching and min-maxing may be to require the spell casters to prepare their option selections beforehand or research them and write them into a spell book to study from and apply a heavy penalty for spontaneous casting.  

As I said, this isn't a fully formed idea and it might have some bad implications that I'm not seeing.  I simply wanted to toss it out as food for thought.

Interesting...I've been thinking about something similar for using ambient energy.  Your basic "spell points" are a sure thing but you can try to cast for free (or perhaps reduced cost) if you're willing to expose yourself to some risk.

I'm trying not to stray too far from D&D though, so there will be an option for prepared spells and the spells will be the spells from D&D.  I'm going to get it nailed down today.

I'm thinking about something Bradford said and I think I'll be making it so you can custom build spell casters by picking a spell types, casting method and energy source.  I think I'll keep the cleric / magic-user split as core because they get different skills.