The Campaign Builder's Guild

I'm looking for some of you guys to talk to me about your D&D systems that have evolved.  I'm not talking about, "Oh, I got tired of D&D back in aught-oh-three, and since then, we've been using FUDGE!"  Rather, I'm talking about, "Well, we like D&D, but the damnable magic system is whack, so here's what we did..."  Talk to me please. :)

Specifically 4e -

We allow a player to choose a power to regenerate (Daily, Utility or Encounter) on a nat 20 during combat

We add 1/2 level to all damage to speed up play

Players never lose a power if they miss with it. Meaning, their Daily isn't spent if they miss (they can try again next round). This GREATLY reduces the At Will nickel and dime 2 hours for 1 encounter scenario presented in 4e.

Healing Surges are NOT based on class. They're 1/2 level + Con bonus, and you don't autoheal on 8 hours of rest. I like the "fragility", and it encourages my players to think very carefully.

A natural roll of 1 means all foes have Combat Advantage against that foe.

The exception always beats the rule. Meaning, if my Fighter can automatically strike and pull someone in if they shift away yet the foe has an ability to counter that, the counter will trump the rule. This encourages players to think very carefully (much akin to chess) before committing to actions.

Jumping, running, swimming, climbing, moving quiety - these are free actions that are wrapped into Movement.


I've found these little houserules to speed up gameplay and make it much more enjoyable for all involved.

I like 4e so far.  No house rules yet, but we'll probably end up allowing Quickdraw to manipulate shields.

Feel free to talk to me about 3E and 3.5 as well. :)

I convinced my group to give the Sorcerer (my core favorite class) the spell progression of the wizard! :)

I can't think of anything else at the moment, let me get back to you on this one.

I guess I should re-clarify... House rules are cool and all, but don't redesign the system.  I'm thinking more about systems that started as D&D, but have become complete redesigns in such a way that they're (possibly) no longer recognized as D&D or a variant thereof.  Sorry I didn't clarify properly originally.

Quote from: Ishmayl"Well, we like D&D, but the damnable magic system is whack, so here's what we did..."

This is pretty much my story. It was to take a page from the JRPG playbook and use MP instead of the crazy "memorization" system that earlier D&D versions suffered through... that's pretty much it. It might not count as enough of a redesign for you. :P

If it was a redesign of the entire magic system, I'd love to hear about it.  I mean, there's definitely some work involved in turning the vancian system into a point-based system.

Well, I suppose this fits me to a 'T' so I ought to respond. I'm working on the details on [link url=http:75.70.105.39:8080/gamewiki/MySystem]my wiki[/link]. It is organizationally a mess right now, because I'm using it as a scratch pad to put down concepts and ideas that may not be fully worked out yet. Still, you can find some details if you poke around long enough.

It started as an attempt to redesign the spell system to support the concepts in my setting. But one thing leads to another. With a very different system for spell description and casting, all the classes that use spells need redesign. Then all the classes that have spell like abilities or abilities that might be comparable to spells. That only leaves out fighter, so what the heck ... make a whole new class system that also better fits the setting. And revamp the skill list, and so on.

With this, you have a system that is vaguely similar to D&D in the following ways:

There are classes and levels.
*D20 mechanics fairly similar.
*There are skills and feats.
*It is aimed at heroic fantasy.

Why classes and levels? Classes provide an easy way in to both the system and the setting. They define what roles are common in the setting and the campaign, and provide pointers to what skills and feats are relevant to those roles. In a pure points-based implementation, you have to find a way to cost out your feats and skills so they are comparable; in a class- and level-based system the level progression controls the ratio of skills and feats, making it easier to balance and avoid having broken combinations. (Easier is still not easy.)

D20 mechanics are familiar and capture things at a level of granularity that I find satisfactory.

Skills are abilities that can be ranked on a D20 scale. Feats are abilities that you either have or don't have; or they may be tiered but can't be ranked on a D20 scale. I find this less constrictive in designing skills and abilities. I've done away with "class abilities" and don't find the "powers" approach of 4e particularly inspiring.

Of course, it is different in a lot of ways:

Most classes follow a standard progression of feats and character points. What makes them different is which skills and feats are core to the class and which are cross-class.
*More flexibility to choose skills and feats that aren't in your class.
*A feat each level, alternating class feat, general feat, cross-class feat.
*Less drastic difference in cost between core skills and non-core.
*No automatic advancement in saves, attack, hit points, mana, or vitality. These are purchased like skills.

My philosophy is to make it easy to create specialized classes for any given campaign or setting, or even for a character if they have a valid and setting-appropriate character concept that doesn't mesh well with the core ones or the ones the GM has defined. Right now the problem is in re-defining and adding enough feats to fill out the feat trees, so I can create core classes. (Well, the real problem is finding the time to do it.)

Give me a year or two and I'll probably have 4E molded my own way.

The biggest thing I did in 3E was with the magic.  I loathe Vancian magic.  If it was good for some guy's story, fine.  LEAVE IT IN THAT STORY.  The change I made here probably wasn't very balanced but I don't think 3.X was super balance focused.  I made each spell slot worth a number of MP equal to its level.  (For example, if a character would normally have  4 level 1 spell slots and 1 level 2 spell slot, they would have 6 MP.)  I then had each spell cost a number of MP equal to its level.  (For example, a level 1 spell cost 1 MP to use.)  I still used the material components and even sometimes required them, or at least the roleplaying of them more often.  I also required that since wizards cast from their spellbook, they had to spend one round reading / casting the spell before it actually went off.  Later on I think I often balanced that by giving them a wider spell selection or slight MP bonus.

So there you have it, a sloppy version of what I did to magic.

Quote from: IshmaylFeel free to talk to me about 3E and 3.5 as well. :)

I gave 3.5 a pretty heavy facelift for Jade Stage purposes, but I was really just making everything more general (so it should work for anybody's setting.)

Notable features:
- the expert, a class for smart, skilled people who don't want to cast magic (like wizards) or sneak attack people and get badly stereotyped (like rogues)
- the face, a class for gregarious, empathetic people who want to make friends and influence people without being all fancy prancy song-and-dancy (like bards)
- various overhauls to other classes, based around maximizing flexibility (so you can more easily play a nimble, unarmored warrior without being all "Mysteries of the Far Orient!", or play a tracker/investigator without also being friends with all the woodland critters)
- heavy magic system upgrade, including 3 spellcasting PrCs (the Mage ("I can do magic because I study hard!", the Channeler ("I can do miracles because a higher force empowers me to", and the Shaper ("I went to Charles Xavier's special school to learn to control my mysterious and dangerous natural powers!")), new ways to classify spells (removing the arcane/divine distinction, for starters), and many new spells
- various feats
- firearms and other assorted gear
- rules for "exceptional masterwork" items to replace magic weapons and armor in low-magic settings

It really is a shame I don't actually use this anymore. It was a hell of a lot of work, and I'm quite proud of it.

LC, what are you using (or do you plan on using) for Jade Stage?

I don't think I've ever taken a system and changed it so much that it became something else.  House rules and tweaks, sure, but not a wholesale change.  If I was going to go through that effort, I'd probably just put my energy into finding a system that did what I wanted up front.  I'd rather work on a setting than on a set of rules.

Quote from: IshmaylLC, what are you using (or do you plan on using) for Jade Stage?

Undecided. Either Triad System (which I still need to put a few finishing touches on), or FATE (the system used for Spirit of the Century, among other things).

Wow.  Great question but how to answer it in a brief forum post.

I gave D&D a huge facelift for my Skybourne campaign, basically creating a customized version of 1st edition / 2nd edition D&D.  So custom that it was probably recognizable but obviously very removed from the original game system.

There is no way I could explain it all in a forum posting as I pretty much have my own version of the PHB rewritten for that game..something like 200 pages.

One of these days if we kick around the same convention though I'd be happy to give you a copy or possibly send you the pdf.

What do you need it for out of curiosity?