Ok, guys, I said I'm working on something, so I might as well ask what you think about general rules. I mix a lot of things from B/X, S&W, and LL, so I hope it's not too clusterfucky. EDIT: forgot to mention ACKS.
I've been playtesting it for a while now without any crippling issues, so here goes:
1)
eight classes ("Archetypes"):
- Fighter (d10): you get the idea, hit fast, hit hard, use anything available. Also: additional attacks on levels 10, 15, and 20. Not sure about cleave mechanics, might be an overkill when combined with additional attacks;
- Thief (d6): nothing new here really, except some general mechanics changes. More on that later. As for now, on 1st level you might pick one skill as your "favorite one", and level it up more quickly;
- Arcanist (d4): generic magic-man, not too much to change, except non-vancian-vancian spellcasting. I will force them to specialize whenever I can, however;
- Cleric (d8): generally works the same way, except only a specific deity/specific deities grant the ability to turn undead/unholy/planar shit. In other cases, deities grant you some additional weapon proficiency (daggers/short swords for Clerics following the goddess of sex and murder), spells (fire-based magic for Clerics of the Forge Father), or both. Basically, a militant, heavy-armored preacher, which is why I don't put a Paladin in my game;
- Bard (d6): I'm yet to see an implementation of the class (both OSR and not) that isn't either warrior-mage-thief, warrior-mage, or this stupid "charming fella" trope (fuck Dandelion with a pineapple). Bard is going to be a walking goldmine of lore, focused on magical instruments, word-shaping powers, and diplomacy. Closer to warrior-poet, I guess, than a dude with fancy mustache;
- Assassin (d6): works as you might expect. Shares some skills with Thief, with a few minor changes: focuses on climbing walls, hiding in shadows, and moving around silently, can freely disguise (the setting doesn't feature any playable non-human races), on higher levels can attempt to craft his own poisons. I'm actually thinking about dropping lockpicking and pickpocketing entirely - he's a highly specialized individual, not Garrett;
- Profiteer (d4): newcomer to the scene, part antiquarian, part grave robber, part caravaneer. Discounts, general greed, access to items normally not available in towns as long as you visited them at some point. Uses some mechanics/ideas stolen almost directly from Traveller sourcebooks. Absolutely useless in combat, though, but it can lead to some interesting party dynamics;
- Ranger (d8): fuck this "must be of good alignment" shit, this guy is all about wilderness survival, dungeon crawling, and monster slaying. No spells, but can fix wounds (in his own, somewhat primitive ways), avoid surprises, or freely reposition himself at the start of a new round. Think of sniper from TF2 and you won't be too far off - pissing in a jar included. If Fighter is there to fuck up humanoids' shit, then Ranger does so for monsters.
The names are just placeholders, so take them with a grain of salt - there's nothing that stops me from renaming Thief to, say, Scoundrel, or Bard to Minstrel. One thing I'll briefly mention is the lack of race options or race-as-class. I've been thinking about this for a long time, and I honestly can't say I'd be happy if I allowed them. They don't bring much to the table, anything can be easily recreated with human cultures, they mostly boil down to "human with pointy ears", and if they're TOO ALIEN, we wouldn't be able to correctly roleplay them. Modern D&D ruined non-human races for me anyway; also (or should I say, above else), it wouldn't make much sense in-universe.
SIDE NOTE: if Ranger evolves in the way I think he will (ranged combat specialist), I might replace his hit die with Assassin, who's more likely to be not necessarily on the frontline, but close to enemy. Or just reduce ranger's HD to d6?
2)
character:
- your usual six stats are here, some renamed, some tweaked a little bit, some left unchanged. Roll 3d6 in order is the only true way. I'm quite vitriolic about "4d6, drop lowest" or "3d6, assign freely" approaches, but I won't stop anyone from doing it - as if I had any way of actually controlling whatever the hell you wanna do in your game. I'm just going to mention that both can catapult your character from "somewhat reasonable" to "heroic" or even "superheroic" levels;
- ascending AC. That's it (but really, it just feels more natural);
- encumbrance: I went with strength = number of equipment slots, with the first 3 items listed being freely available (that is, you can access them without wasting your turn). 100gp take one inventory slot. Armor listed as light/medium/heavy takes 2/3/5 inventory slots, mount barding twice as much. You don't wanna go into a dungeon without a cart, packmules, slaves, or all three;
- gold-as-XP is still there, but I tweaked the numbers a bit, effectively dividing required XP by 10 (say, a Thief takes 125XP to gain 2nd level, instead of 1250), with the amount of loot required bumped up -- you gain the bulk of experience by slaying stuff (XP = 5x monster HD), discovering new things, and solving problems in an intelligent way;
- three saves: fort, ref, will. It just works, I wasted WAY too much time trying to actually come up with something new. Stat check was there for a second, but I really don't want to juggle between roll under and roll over.
3)
some mechanics highlights:
- EVERYTHING is solved by d20 roll, including saves, Thief and Assassin skills, and aforementioned non-vancian-vancian casting, and trying to meet a specific number;
- non-vancian-vancian casting: a stupid name for it, I agree, but it works. I HATE fire-and-forget approach; instead, your Arcanists and Clerics have a target number (similar to saves and Thief's skills) they have to meet in order to NOT forget a spell. General formula is 15+spell level+wits (intelligence) or resolve (wisdom) modifiers-Arcanist's/Cleric's level. The downsides to this are:
- you know A LOT less spells than you might be used to. Arcanists aren't powerhouses anymore, which is why they want to get their hands on everything that might help them survive first levels: wands, scrolls, trinkets;
- it takes a little longer to resolve your turn. About 5 seconds longer, oh my;
- magic can actually screw you in unexpected ways.
If your character can freely cast lower-level spells (you need to roll 2+), you still need to roll - natural 1 grants you randomly generated detrimental effects. There's a reason most people say that magic corrupts the living shit out of you. Corruption leads to tentacles out your ass, reduced stats, and attention from otherwordly... stuff. If that doesn't work, I might as well use Sorcerer's mechanics
- speaking of random effects: a roll of natural 19 grants you a minor crit, a mechanic I stole almost directly from Numenera* (if there are a couple of things I actually enjoy about the system). To give you an example, a roll of 19 might allow you to roll for additional attack instead of directly dealing your weapon damage. Works only for magical (Clerics and Arcanists BOTH) and physical attacks, so no "you find additional 2d100 gold in a chest" on natural 20;
* in Numenera, you actually gain effects of scaling intensity on natural 17, 18, 19, AND 20. This was just a little too much for my tastes
Still, I managed to scrap a couple ideas together, playtest some, and tinker with another. Archetypes/classes are still a big deal - I'm of the opinion that classes should be designed around the setting, not the other way around, so here's what I came up with so far:
