Characters need two hands free to use a crossbow or sling.
• Attacks of Opportunity are always standard attacks, never trips or other attacks.
• You can cast a spell with your hands full at no penalty.
• All spellcasters are assumed to have all necessary spell components, except for
those that cost more than 99 gp. For spell components that cost more than 99
gp, the game deducts gold to cover the expense.
• If you're unconscious but stable and you stabilize on your own, you don't lose hit
points every hour as detailed in DMG p.85. That is, there is no difference between
stabilizing on your own and stabilizing because of aid from another player.
• Disabled characters automatically gain hit points naturally and don't suffer a
chance of dying (DMG p.85).
• Death from massive damage isn't implemented.
• Attack order is always primary attack 1, primary attack 2, primary attack 3 and
offhand attack 1, offhand attack 2. You can’t change that order.
• Dodge gives you bonuses against the first monster to attack you in a round. You
don't get to choose. The burden of choosing an attacker each round is no fun.
• The player must select an alignment for his entire party, which restricts the
player’s choices for individual character alignments. This alignment is tested by
NPCs to produce alignment-based reactions and dialog options and also controls
the background story and starting quest for the player group.
• We think that the D&D 3rd Ed. designers had meant that when you are
encumbered that you would move at three-quarters of your normal movement
rate. However, since they play on a grid of 5' squares, they always rounded this
down, yielding the seemingly inconsistent 30' –> 20' but 20' –> 15'. We
implement movement as a real number that is three-quarters of your normal
movement rate. Thus, a character who is encumbered and could move 30',
now moves 22.5' per turn.
Detect Magic: Does not allow detection of spell school via a Spellcraft roll. Also,
the aura strengths are represented by intensity rather than duration of effect.
• Detect Secret Doors: Detects the presence of secret doors in its range. We
ignored the timing issues.
• Prone characters can't attack at all. This was done to reduce the number
of animations.
• Turned Undead: Turned creatures do not stop being turned if the turner
approaches them.
• Commanded Undead: It does not take a standard action to direct undead;
they function like followers.
• The number of commanded undead is limited by number of followers, not by
double the cleric's level.
• Fascinated creatures (through the bardic music ability) cannot move or attack.
The effect is broken when they take damage.
• Maintaining the bardic Fascinate ability means you do not perform any other
action besides moving that round. If you do, the target is no longer fascinated.
• You can attempt to Fascinate the same creature as many times as your daily
performance allowance permits.
• The bardic music ability Suggestion is replaced with Intimidate: A bard with
nine or more ranks in Perform can Intimidate a single creature. The creature is
affected if he fails a Will saving throw (DC 11 + bard’s Charisma modifier).
Affected creatures are forced to move away from the bard as if affected by a
Fear spell for as many rounds as the bard has levels. Using this ability counts
toward the bard’s daily limit of performances.
• The spell Doom does affect damage rolls (as per the first printing of the PHB,
not the second).
• Barbarian rage was implemented as a three state system: you are normal, raged,
or fatigued. Also, fatigue lasts for as many rounds as the rage lasted. These
changes handle the obscure problem of only raging once per encounter, but
fatigue wearing off at the end of the encounter.
• You can't make a Trip Attack as part of an AOO, Cleave, or Whirlwind Attack.
• You can make a Trip Attack with any weapon. You can’t drop that weapon to
avoid being tripped in return.
• The rogue Opportunist special ability works if the target is hit by a melee
attack in a round — it doesn't matter if you damage the target or not.
• The Skill Mastery special ability has been changed, because take 10 and take
20 works differently in our game and are no longer applicable. Skill Mastery
gives you a +2 bonus on a number of skills equal to (3 + your Intelligence
modifier). This bonus stacks with Skill Focus.
• You can't spontaneously cast spells that have metamagic feats applied to them.
Druid levels and half of the Ranger level (if Ranger level > 4) stack for the purposes
of determining available animal companions for multiclass druid/rangers.
• Lizard familiars give you a +2 bonus on Will saves instead of a bonus on
climb checks.
• Since we don't have the Endurance feat in our game, the prerequisite for
Diehard has been changed to Great Fortitude.
• The Luck Domain special ability has been changed so that you set a checkbox
in order to reroll the next missed saving throw, missed attack or unconfirmed
critical. Once again, the burden of choosing every opportunity is no fun.
• Small and large weapon sizes are implemented as a 3.0/3.5 hybrid. Our
weapon list includes the half-spear and halfling siangham, the halfling kama
and the halfling quarterstaff, but no other small weapons. Medium-sized creatures
can wield the halfling weapons as if they were light weapons, at no
penalty. Halflings can wield medium weapons as if they were one category
larger, without penalty. We include the Sai and Shuriken as per 3.5 rules.
• Deflect Arrows and Snatch Arrows are now passive feats. Deflect arrows is
automatically used at the first opportunity. Similarly, the first weapon thrown
at a character with the Snatch Arrows feat each round is automatically thrown
back at the attacker.
• Characters with the Diehard feat cannot choose to lose consciousness.
• Cloak of Elvenkind will always grant a +10 circumstance bonus to Hide checks
(no pulling it over your head).