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Maiming rules showcase and review

   
Quote:
Originally Posted by Actana View Post
How could I have considered that armor gives DR when the only references to that in the OP are oblique and entirely uninformative about the matter. But sure, let's consider armor. You'll have to provide us with the stats to be able to consider that though, because right now we have no idea how much what affects where. I saw a DR of 6 in the examples. That's nothing. A level 5 Fighter with Power Attack can deal around 2d6+15 damage on a swing (+6 str modifier, +1 weapon, up to +10 from power attack (and I'm not even going that high there), and add in miscellaneous bonuses for an extra bonus), 17-27 variance, average 22. Even with DR 6 the damage goes from 11-21 damage, which is still enough to provide a maiming strike on every single hit.
That's 6 for a middle-quality light armour. Comparing a light armour to a two-handed weapon isn't completely fair. Also, you can't power attack by more than your BAB, so that's actually maximum power attack right there, and it'll leave you with a total attack bonus of 5 against an opponent with significant AC, so most of those attacks would do absolutely nothing. And that guy isn't wearing a helmet or he'd have more AC, making power attack even less beneficial.

Quote:
But, that said, DR doesn't affect magic, so that fireball will still somehow make everyone's limbs fall off.
1. I never covered how armour resists magic. (ER equal to DR.)
2. A single attack can't sever a limb unless it both inflicts massive damage and reduces you to zero HP. Unlikely with a fireball, especially at 5th level where it only deals 5d6.
3. Ask a napalm victim what happened to their limbs. They'll answer "It got burned so badly it would never heal and was amputated to prevent necrosis". That's not an actual dismemberment from the fire, but it may as well be.

Quote:
The Fighter who is more durable than the Wizard shouldn't be more durable than the Wizard? The guy with the muscle and fitness and strength shouldn't be more resistant to having his big sinewy and tough arms chopped off than the dude who spends his time in a library and has the physique of particularly dry twig? I'm not sure I follow the logic here.
If he has greater fitness and strength, that'd be his constitution and strength scores, not his hit dice. A fighter and a wizard with con 14 have equally good cardio, and a fighter and a wizard with str 14 can lift the same weight. The fighter just spent their time learning martial arts and the wizard spent their time learning magic. That fighter's ability to perform a perfect schielhau is valuable, but it doesn't make a wound any less severe.

Quote:
You should read the systems anyway because they can give you a lot of insight in how games can do things and help with overall design, even if you do it in D&D. And not every game is ridiculously complex. Shadow of the Demon Lord is actually really simple, especially compared to D&D. It's also d20 based so anyone with experience with D&D should be able to pick it up with little trouble.
I'm still sticking with D&D for the setting.

Dude. Please give us the DR values of armor if you want a more comprehensive review of your house rules. You're omitting crucial details and then telling us we're wrong because we don't know the details.

Fine. Here's the armor rules copy+pasted from another thread.



If you could't tell, I really like armour, so there's a lot here. Which is why I hadn't given these yet.

It's probably important to show all his houserules, as they do fully modify the rules and the armor section alone doesn't actually have all the relevant info.
Here. Scrubbed

The reaction in this thread sums up the general consensus, though. Absurdly detailed with extremely high concept, but generally questionable game mastery makes the implementation more than a bit awkward.

Yeah I'm just going to stick to "this is not what D&D is meant for. You really should use another system." But hey, we've already reached the conclusion of that particular line of thought so I'm just going to bow out now before someone (including myself) does something they regret.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Veradux View Post
It's probably important to show all his houserules, as they do fully modify the rules and the armor section alone doesn't actually have all the relevant info.
Here. Scrubbed

The reaction in this thread sums up the general consensus, though. Absurdly detailed with extremely high concept, but generally questionable game mastery makes the implementation more than a bit awkward.
1. Changing the rules is not "maiming" them.
2. When I said "It's effectively a new edition", I meant it.
3. Choosing to ignore rulebooks like Serpent Kingdoms is not "questionable game mastery", most 3.5 sourcebooks are just game-breakingly awful.

Then write a new edition, instead of turning 3.5e's highly simulationist system into a Frankenstein-esque collection of houserules.

Or play AD&D with all the bells and whistles, as it already has everything your houserules do. Like variable armor values based on sources of damage.
You'd need to figure out guns, yes, but that's not too difficult.

The difference is that AD&D is obscenely unbalanced and clumsy, armour is totally worthless in all editions of D&D, and the content of later editions is completely lost. Whereas this approach allows other content to fit with minimal adjustment, lets me pick and choose the not totally broken bits from other sourcebooks, and isn't any more difficult to play than standard 3.5. Oh, and the sourcebook is on the way, it'll just be a while and I don't care to wait.

And Actana, all D&D is meant for is generic, shallow, film-emulating escapist power fantasies with black and white morality that is uninteresting and doesn't hold up to scrutiny at all. Most of us owe our enjoyment of the game to the fact that it can be used for more than it's intended for, and at this point even dark fantasy and horror are not that strange to see in Dungeons and Dragons settings.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Avianmosquito View Post
If he has greater fitness and strength, that'd be his constitution and strength scores, not his hit dice. A fighter and a wizard with con 14 have equally good cardio, and a fighter and a wizard with str 14 can lift the same weight. The fighter just spent their time learning martial arts and the wizard spent their time learning magic. That fighter's ability to perform a perfect schielhau is valuable, but it doesn't make a wound any less severe.
That's an argument for using a retro-clone where all HDs are d6s, if I've ever seen one!


But fine, let's consider this. The problem with your reasoning is that a fighter and a wizard that have equally good acrobatic ability, out of armour and with no magic, don't have meaningfully different odds to get hit.
Do you mean that the fighter's training only included shielhau, but not defending from shielhau and prevent your hand from being broken? Because that's what follows from your rules, and I'm not sure you want that.

Also, the best non-magical non-tournament armour in your setting seems to be royal steel plate mail, and I'm not sure that a 16 DR is going to matter against a charging 5th level Barbarian. The guy has a +9 to hit merely from Strength, charging and a masterwork weapon, not accounting for magic bonuses or the like. And 2d6+16 means that one in six hits will deal enough damage against a 5th level PC in the best non-magical armour.

I'd recommend that you take a look at the Runequest family of games. Losing limbs is quite possible, and it basically does what you want out of the box. Also, it's among the first systems ever published, predating GURPS, so you have enourmous amounts of stuff to populate your setting with!
You might want to check the legality of the situation if you're planning to publish it, of course, I'm no expert on that. I imagine that there are enough d100 licenses flowing around that it's probably going to be possible.


Also, after seeing your last post, I suspect I shouldn't have bothered. But I started posting before you had posted it.
Have fun, and good luck with your game!

Quote:
Originally Posted by AsenRG View Post
That's an argument for using a retro-clone where all HDs are d6s, if I've ever seen one!

But fine, let's consider this. The problem with your reasoning is that a fighter and a wizard that have equally good acrobatic ability, out of armour and with no magic, don't have meaningfully different odds to get hit.
Do you mean that the fighter's training only included shielhau, but not defending from shielhau and prevent your hand from being broken? Because that's what follows from your rules, and I'm not sure you want that.
1. I tried making an AC-based variant ruleset once, but it didn't go over well.
2. I also considered a percentage-based variant of this ruleset.

Quote:
Also, the best non-magical non-tournament armour in your setting seems to be royal steel plate mail, and I'm not sure that a 16 DR is going to matter against a charging 5th level Barbarian. The guy has a +9 to hit merely from Strength, charging and a masterwork weapon, not accounting for magic bonuses or the like. And 2d6+16 means that one in six hits will deal enough damage against a 5th level PC in the best non-magical armour.
1. Charging only increases damage, not attack.
2. Dropping from 23 to 7 is huge.
3. How do you get +16? I get +21.

Quote:
I'd recommend that you take a look at the Runequest family of games. Losing limbs is quite possible, and it basically does what you want out of the box. Also, it's among the first systems ever published, predating GURPS, so you have enourmous amounts of stuff to populate your setting with!
I've heard of it, but I'm not familiar and I am presently running four games in this setting.

Quote:
You might want to check the legality of the situation if you're planning to publish it, of course, I'm no expert on that. I imagine that there are enough d100 licenses flowing around that it's probably going to be possible.
A free .pdf is unlikely to result in legal issues.




 

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