Post by Chris Chinn on Jan 31, 2012 8:44:49 GMT -8
I've been hacking together a D&D clone aimed at being sort of a cross between Basic, OD&D, with 4E stunts.
Basic features
1) Assigned stats w/some randomness
attributes are 16,14,12, 11, 10, 8, and then you roll to see which attribute gets a +2.
2) D6 Hit Dice, all day
Everything has D6 Hit Dice, and weapons do D6 generally. Characters reroll their Hit Dice on each level and take the the higher total - either what they currently have, or what they've rolled.
3) Focus on Class Features
And, class features also being stuff that helps in non-combat situations or general exploration. For example, Wizards get to roll to see if they already know any other spell caster they meet (or at least, have heard of them) and similar for monsters. This kind of stuff can feed back into encounter logic, too, with stuff like Protection Against Evil getting bonuses if you can name the specific creature ("It's the Balrog/You shall not pass/etc.")
4) Spells
Way back, D&D used to work on the time scale of the "adventure" or the "delve" rather than the current problem of "15 minute work day" where everyone blasts out their spells then waits.
So, I'm doing a couple of things to push this clone towards that:
a) Spells take a week to recharge!
b) Some spells are one-shot novas, but many spells are duration spells, which give you an ability or attack for a given number of hours or more
The other thing I'm doing is limiting the number of spell slots characters have- Wizards max at 8 spell slots, and Clerics at 5. Instead of increasing the number of spells, the spell slots improve what level of spells they can hold. Aside from forcing people to make tough choices about which spells to carry, it also reduces the odds of the problem when people can stack too many options together for broken combinations.
When I'm done knocking together spells for level 1-2 I'll post a full text.
Chris
Basic features
1) Assigned stats w/some randomness
attributes are 16,14,12, 11, 10, 8, and then you roll to see which attribute gets a +2.
2) D6 Hit Dice, all day
Everything has D6 Hit Dice, and weapons do D6 generally. Characters reroll their Hit Dice on each level and take the the higher total - either what they currently have, or what they've rolled.
3) Focus on Class Features
And, class features also being stuff that helps in non-combat situations or general exploration. For example, Wizards get to roll to see if they already know any other spell caster they meet (or at least, have heard of them) and similar for monsters. This kind of stuff can feed back into encounter logic, too, with stuff like Protection Against Evil getting bonuses if you can name the specific creature ("It's the Balrog/You shall not pass/etc.")
4) Spells
Way back, D&D used to work on the time scale of the "adventure" or the "delve" rather than the current problem of "15 minute work day" where everyone blasts out their spells then waits.
So, I'm doing a couple of things to push this clone towards that:
a) Spells take a week to recharge!
b) Some spells are one-shot novas, but many spells are duration spells, which give you an ability or attack for a given number of hours or more
The other thing I'm doing is limiting the number of spell slots characters have- Wizards max at 8 spell slots, and Clerics at 5. Instead of increasing the number of spells, the spell slots improve what level of spells they can hold. Aside from forcing people to make tough choices about which spells to carry, it also reduces the odds of the problem when people can stack too many options together for broken combinations.
When I'm done knocking together spells for level 1-2 I'll post a full text.
Chris