Quote from: VisionStorm on December 03, 2020, 07:51:54 AM

This I totally agree with and have proposed similar things before. I HATE the artificial Arcane/Divine magic split, which is almost entirely a D&D invention that bears zero resemblance to real life mystical traditions or even fiction outside of works that copied D&D's cosmology later on. And priestly roles and duties should not be tied to a specific RPG "class". That's just an occupation, and tying it to a "divinely inspired" magic using class creates unrealistic expectations of what a priest should be and how religion functions in the game world, where every "priest" is necessarily casting "miracles" all over the place, and if they can't, we "know" they're out of favor or something's "wrong" with them. Religious mystics could have magical abilities, but magic should not be intrinsically tied to religion.

OTOH, I don't mind the arcane/divine divide when it is done well and really tied into the lore/fluff of the game world. My best example of this is WFRP (most familiar with 2e, warming up to 4e). The magic of the wizards and the magic of the priests is very different, even as each college of wizards has differences as does each order of priests. This setting also has lots of pious non-spellcasting priests, many of whom hold immense political power in their orders. So, basically, they did well what D&D tries (and often fails) to do.

Quote from: Torque2100 on December 02, 2020, 08:43:49 AM
Yet another problem which can be solved by not playing DnD.

That has the terrible disadvantage that at this point, you're not playing D&D.

This is a stupid solution. It's like cutting off your arm to avoid getting a hangnail.

D&D is super easy to modify. You can modify it into anything. The OSR proves that.

Did I mention not raising hit Points above Level 1?

Make characters fragile and they respond with greater thought vs. greater force.

Played under a DM who had an interesting solution to the raise dead question; the spell was available as normal, but being brought back meant you left something behind, you started having problems similar to failing a ravenloft powers check, you'd come back for example with your eyes a funky color that glow in low light, maybe you got infravision, but it came with a social stigma, you would be shunned and treated like a witch/warlock/devil worshipper, the term was "the fallen" or "the risen". The more you got raised the worse it got until eventually you were not human anymore, might suffer alignment change, and could be relegated to npc villain.

Quote from: Theory of Games on December 15, 2020, 08:49:23 PM
Did I mention not raising hit Points above Level 1?

Make characters fragile and they respond with greater thought vs. greater force.

You don't need to go that far, but in retrospect 1E and 2E were smart about not allowing PCs to gain hit dice beyond a certain level. It limited how many hit points even a fighter could bring to the table.

Quote from: Ghostmaker on December 16, 2020, 08:43:45 AM
You don't need to go that far, but in retrospect 1E and 2E were smart about not allowing PCs to gain hit dice beyond a certain level. It limited how many hit points even a fighter could bring to the table.

In addition to Hit Dice, the changes to Con modifiers in 3e especially contribute to this.

In AD&D non-fighters capped at +2 hp/HD from a high Con.

In 3e, start with a Con 14, then add a +6 stat booster, +5 inherent bonus and maybe +1 for a level bump and you're at Con 26 or +8 hp per Hit Die (so 80 extra hit point at level 10, 160 extra at level 20).

There's a reason my system has 'hit points' scale at either 16+4/level, 20+5/level, or 24+6/level with a cap at level 15 (so 95 for most players at max level; by contrast your 'zero level' warrior would have 5-10 hp) while an attack from a level 15 monster would do about 38 damage (so yes, a level 4 PC could take ONE non-critical hit and still be upright... and know they should rightly be running for their life not trying to engage; I consider that a feature not a bug).

Quote from: Chris24601 on December 16, 2020, 11:02:15 AM

Quote from: Ghostmaker on December 16, 2020, 08:43:45 AM
You don't need to go that far, but in retrospect 1E and 2E were smart about not allowing PCs to gain hit dice beyond a certain level. It limited how many hit points even a fighter could bring to the table.

In addition to Hit Dice, the changes to Con modifiers in 3e especially contribute to this.

In AD&D non-fighters capped at +2 hp/HD from a high Con.

In 3e, start with a Con 14, then add a +6 stat booster, +5 inherent bonus and maybe +1 for a level bump and you're at Con 26 or +8 hp per Hit Die (so 80 extra hit point at level 10, 160 extra at level 20).

There's a reason my system has 'hit points' scale at either 16+4/level, 20+5/level, or 24+6/level with a cap at level 15 (so 95 for most players at max level; by contrast your 'zero level' warrior would have 5-10 hp) while an attack from a level 15 monster would do about 38 damage (so yes, a level 4 PC could take ONE non-critical hit and still be upright... and know they should rightly be running for their life not trying to engage; I consider that a feature not a bug).

It doesn't help that the way ACs and attack bonuses scale, sometimes you need all the HP you can get as ablative armor.

Quote from: Ghostmaker on December 16, 2020, 05:22:59 PM

Quote from: Chris24601 on December 16, 2020, 11:02:15 AM

Quote from: Ghostmaker on December 16, 2020, 08:43:45 AM
You don't need to go that far, but in retrospect 1E and 2E were smart about not allowing PCs to gain hit dice beyond a certain level. It limited how many hit points even a fighter could bring to the table.

In addition to Hit Dice, the changes to Con modifiers in 3e especially contribute to this.

In AD&D non-fighters capped at +2 hp/HD from a high Con.

In 3e, start with a Con 14, then add a +6 stat booster, +5 inherent bonus and maybe +1 for a level bump and you're at Con 26 or +8 hp per Hit Die (so 80 extra hit point at level 10, 160 extra at level 20).

There's a reason my system has 'hit points' scale at either 16+4/level, 20+5/level, or 24+6/level with a cap at level 15 (so 95 for most players at max level; by contrast your 'zero level' warrior would have 5-10 hp) while an attack from a level 15 monster would do about 38 damage (so yes, a level 4 PC could take ONE non-critical hit and still be upright... and know they should rightly be running for their life not trying to engage; I consider that a feature not a bug).

It doesn't help that the way ACs and attack bonuses scale, sometimes you need all the HP you can get as ablative armor.

Indeed. Which was another of my personal changes... hp and damage scale linearly... Defenses and to-hit were nearly static (you could get at most +3 to each out of leveling and talent options). And part of that was because my version of hit points were entirely non-physical and so are INTENDED to be ablative armor that recovers quickly with rest.

A master swordsman in my rules deals more damage (likely to drop a mook with each attack that hits) and can lose more hit points before dropping (and mook hits also do less damage; easier to spend a little stamina to prevent anything more than a scratch), allowing him to take on multiple less-skilled foes.

Yet even against someone only basically trained there are some spans of six-seconds where even a master won't have a good opening to drop them (i.e. a missed attack roll) and even with the best of training sometimes it takes a bit of effort to turn aside an amateur's attack (and enough of that will tire you until you make a mistake eventually).

The big key is figuring out where you want the balance point for your system. For mine, a mook has about 10 hp and deals about 4 with about a 50% "hit" rate. A first level PC has about 25 hp (can rally by giving up a turn and some long term endurance to regain 12 once or twice in a fight) and deals about 10 hp with about a 55-60% hit rate. The result is that 3-4 mooks are unlikely to kill a first level PC, but once you're at 10 or so, the fight is almost certain to end badly for the PC without some other advantage on your side.

My system also is relatively forgiving by default of being dropped to 0 (each turn requires a recovery check with a failure causing you to lose a point of the same long term endurance you use to rally with the average PC having about 8... at zero hp and long-term endurance you succumb to your injuries and die... long term endurance comes back at about 1 point per hour of rest and can also be lost through certain other exertions like taking an extra action or using ritual magic; so the more you use it to gain benefits the more risk you're in of death if you run out of hit points in a battle).

That said, I've also got some alternate tone settings where if you want it softer the long term endurance check only happens once a minute or hour... for more danger, each time you drop to zero hit points you also take cumulative lasting injuries (by default a week or more to heal without magic). Tune it to where you find it the most interesting for your campaign.

There's also a distinction between using a "raise dead" ritual when the target suffered the 'dead' condition just minutes ago (in which case they're not actually dead, just beyond non-magical help of recovery) and using it on someone who is "dead-dead" (and even that caps out at just a few days for all but one-in-a-million holy men with a once-in-a-generation figure maybe being able to resurrect someone up to two weeks gone).