I'm working on, a homage to D&D, yes I know there are a LOT of them out there now, but I'm trying to make things very very simple.

The key elements of this are an interesting setting that still hits the D&D "mixed in a bag and poured out" feel.

A system where class and level are the important numbers, with stats as an element as well.

The basic goal is that if you take a Warrior class, your level in that class provides the main number that you use in play. So a Warrior 1, has a +1 to hit, +1 to damage, and +1 to Tactics, etc etc.

Of course there are problems with this such as:

Do you have to possess a Warrior class to be any good at combat?
What do clerics and rogues use their abilities for?

Classes are stackable to create special classes. Want to be a Paladin? You need to have Two Levels of Warrior and One of Cleric and then you can switch to Paladin and its bonuses stack with both cleric and warrior ones.

How do I handle Hit Points? Based on Race? Flat numbers for everyone, but modified by class?


The idea is of course to keep the "X but Y in Q cases" numbers down, and use as much straight addition to play so the mechanic is mostly 1d20+Class Level+Attribute


I've considered letting warriors get +1 a level to hit, and everyone else progressing more slowly, BUT I can see the appeal of using a system like BECM where mostly to hits are static for everyone as well, and perhaps warriors just get more HP and Damage. Alternately, Warriors might get Level+1, to hit, but that means they're no longer easy to look and say "Warrior Paths 5" so +5


Magic is also in contention, I can build a "build a spell from options, roll difficulty to cast' system that I started with, but I'm thinking to keep it D&D like to use the classic fire and forget method, but make total levels in Magic using classes your total spell levels. So a Level 4 Wizard can have 1 4th level spell, or 1 3rd and 1 First, or 2 2nd levels, or 4 first levels, and stack those up in a very simple yet elegant way. Of course with fewer spells over all, since you want to be reasonably effective, you'll end up wanting those spells to have a bit more oomph for those trade offs.


For the record this game will be FOR free, except as POD, and all the art, layout, etc will be my personal work. Mostly as a challenge to myself to do so.

My 2 cp would be:
*3.x multiclassing never quite worked, IMHO.
 
*Bonus = Level seems like a good idea. Instead of 'Warrior Level+1' you could always give the warriors an extra bonus elsewhere - say, a bonus to Strength that in turn gives them a to-hit bonus. I don't know if 1 point between rogues and fighters is enough, really.
 
*for hit points, personally I've always liked games which had [hit points = Con] though that not exactly D&Dish, and there are downsides (no easy to kill 1 HD monsters unless you abandon consistency).

Have you looked at Warrior Rogue Mage, which works in a similar minimal-stats concept? Or Barbarians of Lemuria, where you have multiple careers which come with their necessary skill penumbras baked-in (So kinda WFRP-lite)?

BoL does have more sub-attributes (Fighting styles - brawl, melee, ranged, dodge), but you could probably ditch those and just use stats and careers as your bases.

Because, what you basically have here isn't a class system, it's a very broad skill system.

I would ditch classes. Instead have previous professions like WFRP, so you'd have Former Soldier/Veteran, ex Priest, former Apprentice Mage, ex Thief. once a character is an adventurer they can then spend their hard earned experience/skills on whatever they want, albeit the cost might be prohibitive. If a former soldier turned adventurer decides he wants to learn how to cast magic, why not?

Ditch hit points, or split them up into Health (for bashing damage and fatigue purposes) and Body (for cuts and nasty bruises up to broken or severed limbs). Depending on who the game is aimed at, a gore splattered critical system made my players love MERP when they were firmly locked into BECMI and AD&D 1e at the time. I thought they'd never try anything else until I used the MERP system with Middle Earth filed off and replaced by BECMI Karameikos. They loved it, primarily because it ditched the cube o hit points thing with semi realistic wounds and bleeding. And tripping over unseen imaginary turtles or some such.

With regards Magic, it should be volatile, so that a roll is required for a spell to go off successfully. If the roll fails, the spell fizzles. If it fails really badly, something nasty happens. Likewise is the roll is decent, you may get better effect/duration/damage/range from it, but if you roll REALLY well it might be more than you bargained for (fireball suddenly going from 5m expected radius to 20m, for instance - watch out eyebrows!)

Depends on whether you're going for High Fantasy/Happy elves and magic shoppes or grim and perilous/chaos is all around us with everything and everyone looking like they need a wash or hose down.

Quote from: Silverlion;553954I'm working on, a homage to D&D, yes I know there are a LOT of them out there now, but I'm trying to make things very very simple.

The key elements of this are an interesting setting that still hits the D&D "mixed in a bag and poured out" feel.

A system where class and level are the important numbers, with stats as an element as well.

Quote from: APN;554081I would ditch classes...

Ditch hit points...

APN, while your preference seems to be for non-classes, I don't see how this would at all fit Silverlion's design goals.

If his intent is indeed as he stated, class is one of the key elements of his game system. Indeed, class is one of the key elements that makes D&D feel like D&D. Switch to a non-class system and you get Runequest or MERP something else entirely.

If you want Profession APN, get my game High Valor, where they're another trait set you can pick up along with any other.

It is indeed as finarvyn says, I explicitly want classes.


Bonus to strength is a neat idea, but the problem is compounded in a level based game (Tunnels & Trolls) where some heroes are WILDLY stronger beyond anyone else. (In that though it ended up being Wizards and Warriors.)

Bonus to damage is interesting, but what about a bonus simply to ignore more armor? A Level 1 fighter can ignore 1 point of armor. This makes their strikes do more damage since Armor absorbs/reduces damage.

Thanks Ladybird:  I've looked at Both WYRM, and BOL, but they're not really class based games. They're  more like skill driven games with classes as skills. That's alright, but its not what I would like to do; however, I will go read them again and see if I can draw anything from them, since it has been a little while. It is a GOOD suggestion, thank you.

Bloody Johnson:

What did you think didn't work in multiclassing? In this you change path and get the new paths abilities, but they don't stack with non-path classes. Of course path classes abilities stack and can override that rule.

A Paladin can stack Warrior/Cleric levels together for Paladin stuff (along with Paladin levels)

A Ranger can combine Warrior/Rogue (and Nature Cleric/Druid) if they so choose. Allowing them to be either the sneaky wilderness guy or the beast-friend guy, or whatever.

A Mage mixed with fighter and the race of Elf can become a Runeknight, while a Halfling can mix Rogue and Warrior to become a Harrier.

Combine the same path often enough? Unlkock bigger things. Sticking to Mage for 10 levels and you unlock Archmage, while Warriors can become Warlords, and so on...


Anyway I appreciate the feedback.

I think what I get from this is Warriors get Armor Piercing (and combat tricks), Rogues get Stealth Tricks, Clerics get Social Tricks, and Mages, Magic ones. On top of nominal class abilities.

I think, I'll have background skills--these are things like Secondary Skills in AD&D, or does that complicate things to much? I'm going to go with spell slots, but with Levels=Total slots, and a skill roll, albeit an easy one, to allow for Magic Tricks. (Like adding some Oomph to range, or a small bonus to damage, or sending a Magic Missile/Arcane Arrow around the corner.)

Hi Silverlion,

T&T attribute raises, with raises going on every level, is probably too much. I was thinking more like if someone takes Warrior as a class, they get a +2 to Strength, and that's it - more like Palladium than T&T.


On multiclassing, with D&D 3.0 multiclassing the multiclass characters were too weak - the worst case is probably the fighter/mage -it gives up half of its fighting ability and half of its spellcasting, but can only do one or the other at any given time, plus on top of that various scaling issues - monster ACs and spell resistance values are scaled to stop the full-class character. In general some of the classes multiclass OK (fighter and rogue for instance), but alot of them had unique shticks that didn't.
3.5s solution to this -  your 'paladin' class reminded me of that - was the prestige classes that let you do 2 things at once. So the fighter/wizard could take Eldritch Knight, the cleric/wizard Mystic Theurge and so on. They were OK - I've played a bunch of these - but I think they're a 'patch' on the basic system not working, and lead to having to design a different specialty class for every multiclass combination for it to be playable.

Apart from that, 3E has problems with 'front loading' - a couple of 3.0 classes also got redesigned in 3.5 due to the multiclass rules to prevent 1-level dips to grab all their powers - specifically Monk evasion got moved to L2, as did Ranger two weapon fighting. 'Tail wagging the dog' as they say.

Sorry about the rant...your system may work, it depends alot on the specifics.

Cheers,
BSJ

Not so much a rant. You didn't use enough caps or curse words. However, it is an interesting point.

In this the idea isn't giving up half, but gaining a different half to be flexible. A 2nd Level warrior is going to be better than  a 1/1, its just the nature of the thing, however the 1/1 has more varied options. Of course someone can go 1/1/1/1 and have all major paths, but they lose most of the benefits of simply going to level 4 fighter. Plus there aren't of "class" features, or class feature creep. A class does what it says on the tin, and that's about it. A warrior is good at fighting and surviving, a Cleric good at divine magic, community connections. Combining them is fine because the breadth you get is a loss in depth.

Its not like someone gets better hit points/saves/etc. They get a +1 Warrior benefit. Which isn't better than the +1 cleric benefit, just different. I think the problem with 3E+ was the number of class abilities packed into the class at the beginning, and that I'm trying to reduce.

Warrior Features would be:
Warrior Bonus HP Level+1
Warrior Armor Piercing Level
Warrior Armor Benefit Level
Fighting Trick Level

Cleric features wold be:
Cleric Bonus HP Level
Divine Magic Level
Religious Trick Level
Community/Social bonus Level

Wizard Features
Wizard bonus HP Level
Magic Level
Magic Tricks Level
Lore Bonus Level

Rogue Features
Rogue bonus HP Level
Rogue Stealth Level
Rogue Deception
Rogue Tricks Level


Of course the features for Ranger (Warrior 2/Rogue 1/Ranger 1) Would be?
Do I combine Warrior and Rogue and combine all levels for stackable things?
Do I only give them the Warrior+Ranger Level for Ranger stuff that matches and the
Rogue+Ranger level for Ranger stuff that relates to Rogue?


Something to think upon...

Reducing the number of class abilities at the beginning reduces or eliminates the front-loading problem, definitely.

Give extra flexibility at a cost of some power is fine, though its very hard to work out how much these things are worth. Leads to a lot of questions on how much a level 2 spell is better than a level 3 spell, how AC scales, how skills improve (i.e. whether your thief can expect to sneak past someone of the same level) and so on.

I'm thinking that lets say you've got a spell list like AD&D, I'll take two spells:

Magic Missile and Fireball.


A fifth level caster can cast either in this game, he may be able to cast both but--but he can apply up to 5 spell tricks to the effect. So a Magic Missile+5 tricks is awesome

A Fireball PLUS+2 tricks is MORE awesome.

Tricks I'm thinking are slightly buffed damage. (MM does 1d6+1 normally, but with a trick adds +1) another trick can give it longer range and so on. You still get the multiple missiles at the same rate.


While a Fireball does 5d6 Damage for a 5th level caster, BUT he has trwo tricks to add to that, one gives him 5d6+1 damage, another doubles its radius.

Alright Actions anyone can do:

Attack.
Dodge: Bonus for Rogues
Block/Parry: Bonus for Warriors
Inspire: Bonus for Clerics

Calm Fear: Bonus for Clerics
Intimidate: Bonus for Wizards

Move: Bonus for Martial Artist(?)

Hide: Bonus for Rogues.
Dirty Trick: Bonus for Rogues
Feint: Bonus for Rogues

Things anyone can do but no one has a bonus too.
Reload Weapon.
Aim
Sheathe Weapon
Tackle/Rush
Disarm
Trip
Called Shot


Anything else?

How should armor be handled, I was going with as a damage mitigator, but that has problems in  a game making certain weapons always optimal.

I was considering that perhaps a roll over the number to hit also acted as Armor Piercing to some extent (say 5+ on  a d20 roll) this also lets warriors really whack things since they can get a bonus to hit, plus natural skilled armor piercing.

The problem also goes to the effect of non-abstracted (too much) combat. Since each strike is one attack roll, and the same for defense. How do we handle clerics who are martial but not as martial as fighters?


I need a better name for "Tricks" I could call them Schtick, or "Feats", which fit the more classic use of the word, or Advantage.

I was trying to make armor reduce damage. It just doesn't work as well with high hit points, monsters all over the map, and random damage. The latter I'd like to keep so I'm thinking on this--it does add an additional roll to combat which is a pain, but its testable to see how much.

AC's become Armor Saves (You subtract the AC from 20.) The save works like so--you roll over the AS  and you ping the attack--no damage. (Its late so my number crunching might be off. If you have leather armor you've got to roll  a 19-20+ to defend with your armor and a 20 always ping.

Plate Mail AC 8 means you have to roll a 12 or higher. (May adjust saves to make em more useful.)

Armor Piercing increases this number against you.

With random roll damage and fixed Damage Absorption you've got a problem that pretty soon only high end damaging weapons are useful. With fixed damage you run into DA outstripping the weaponry.

What do you think?

Who me?
 
My 2c: I actually really like the mechanic of having a separate 'armour save', rather than armour absorbing damage, even though its an extra roll (Dragon Warriors does this, and I'm quite fond of it there; it uses a variable dice - d3 to about d10)
 
You can build some really nifty rules off it, e.g.
 
*have weapons that are high-damage/low-armour penetration instead of just having the best weapon be the one with the best damage.
 
*have weapons that need multiple bypass rolls (stuff like tridents, triple flails, or the awesomely cool African Throwing Knife).
 
*have weapon breakage/possible breakage occurring on a failed armour bypass, so you can distinguish between a dropped weapon fumble (1 on the attack roll) and a possible weapon break fumble (1 vs. armour).
 
*have different types of magical weapons e.g. magic swords that add a bonus to bypass armour ('sharpness'), or deal automatic damage regardless of bypass e.g. electrical damage regardless of bypass vs. metal armour (lightning-based weapons).
 
To keep number of rolls down, you might remove the damage roll and have a high bypass roll somehow give a bonus to damage.
The other potential issue is that if hitting someone requires both successfully hitting and bypassing armour, combat can get a bit whiffy (something I noticed a bit with Dragon Warriors; its fairly hard to successfully injure people).
 
 
Damage absorbtion is probably OK too, but works best when damage can open-end or get bonuses from high attack rolls so that puny weapons aren't completely useless. One thing it does do is let the warriors take more damage (by reducing damage taken), without necessarily having more Hit Points; it may be a good solution if for some reason everyone has fairly similar HPs (e.g. HP systems that are directly CON-based)
 
Thinking about your post really helped me clarify some thoughts here - so thanks muchly.

So what weapons have the best penetration values without going all 1E AD&D and making them work differently against armor?

Daggers/Stilettos
Warhammer (Classic Spike Warhammer, not Thor blunt)
Long Sword (Thrust)
Rapier
Spear

Those make sense to me.