And here are the samples.


2 Talents
Talents consist of up to 3 mechanical parts: 
Passive Benefit (Green): An ability that is always available, for example a continual bonus or a special combat option.
Action Dice Benefit (Red) : Applies when you spend an action point to improve a d20 roll.
Action Point Option (Black): Describes an option in play that you can only use by spending an action point fo that purpose only.

Brawl You know how to hold your own in a melee.

Passive Benefit: Your unarmed attacks deal 1d8 points of nonlethal damage. Increase this damage to 1d10 for your second and to 1d12 for your third talent from the Brawler talent tree.

Action Dice Benefit: Trigger: You spend an action point to improve your attack result with a unarmed attack. Effect: If you still miss with the attack, you deal nonlethal damage equal to your STR modifier to the target.

Vehicle Empathy You have a uncanny connection with vehicles.

Prerequisite: Increased Speed Passive Benefit: You gain a +2 talent bonus to Drive and Pilot Checks.

Action Point Option: Trigger: You enter a vehicle you are not proficient with. Benefit: You become proficient with this specific vehicle. You retain this proficiency until one hour after you have left it.

2 Feats
These are pretty much your standard "d02" feats. The only difference to the standard is that I put them in mini-tables instead of regularly flowing text.

Action Boost

Prerequisite: Fast, Strong or Tough Hero

Benefit: You roll 1d8 instead of 1d6 for your action dice.

True Conviction

Prerequisite: Charismatic, Dedicated or Smart Ordinary or Hero.

Benefit: You gain a pool of conviction points equal to two twice your levels in a Charismatic, Dedicated or Smart Hero or Ordinary levels plus the highest of your Charisma, Intelligence or Wisdom modifier (minimum +0). Any conviction damage you take is first subtracted from that pool. This pool refreshes after each rest.

Conviction Damage is a new mechanical concept that allows me to deal a special type of "mental" attack - stuff like tricks, taunts, intimidation. Think of Torg's or Savage Worlds Taunt/Trick Intimidate/Test.

2 Combat Options
Combat options still use basically the same color scheme as talents.

Double Tap You make two quick shots.

Weapon: Semi-Automatic Ammo: 2 Benefit: Take a -2 penalty to the attack and deal one extra die of damage.

Disarm You take your opponent’s weapon.

Defender Advantages: +4 if he is wielding the weapon in two hands and you do not. Success: The opponent loses its weapon. It either lands in adjacent square of your choice. If you had your hand free, you instead have the weapon free and ready to use. Risk: You lose your weapon. It lands in an adjacent square of your opponent’s choice. If you were unarmed, you are instead knocked prone.

PS: The RichText Editor seems to dislike the blue background on the headers. They appear in the editor but not in the posted page. I have changed the text color to make it readable again until I figured a better to achieve the intended result.

I haven't been active for some time now. I found too much else to do, like using half my free time for watching FarScape and the other half for playing Dragon Age.

But let's get back to some roleplaying game stuff.

I am "theoretically" a fan of d20 Modern. Why theoretically? I like the idea, the core system seems neat. But in actual play, it seems to leave something to be desired. It somehow always lacked the color of D&D 3.x, Torg, Shadowrun or now D&D 4. There just aren't all that many options during the game. Combat seems relatively tedious compared to other games. There are less options, and at the same time luck often seems to play a higher rule than decision making and tactics. Of course, compared to D&D 3.x for example, it just doesn't have all the spells (and especially buff spells), compared to D&D 4 it lacks the richness of powers, and compared to Shadowrun its combat takes longer.

TheClone and I were discussing this issue about his D20 Modern Online Campaign. We are researching alternatives (for example, Star Wars Saga or Savage Worlds). One option was introducing a few house rules.

I always toyed with the idea of creating a d20 Modern 2.0 based on 4E concepts like roles, silos or powers, applying both more widely and not just in the combat part of the game.

Well, this is not that take. It's a little bit in that direction, but still very different. My main idea in this part was to use action points as a more important resource. Class talents should give "passive" benefits that could be relatively straightforward, and also benefits requiring action points to be used. The approach doesn't care about siloing much, e.g. you can choose between advantages in combats or advantages outside of combat. So it's still not my "ideal" thing, but it something that I consider as possibly interesting.

One thing I considered while writing my new approach - how to represent the options you have? I devised a simple "power" format for all talents, feats and even some combat options that would give all the relevant information on it. This should make it easier to find the information and to organize it, even without electronic or software support - aside maybe from a text processing software.

A few simple examples in my next post...

 And here are some feats for the Demon Pact Warlock. 
The feats expand a little on the Demon Pacts ability to use his curse in "demonic" ways and to use his Darkspiral Aura, and also add a few abilities related to dealing with elemental damage types.

( Read more... )

This is the second part of the Demon Pact Warlock powers.

This is a revised version of the Demon Pact Warlock, with a lot of additional powers and a few feats. This also cover a lot of new utility powers.
A lot of the power changes were based on comments and suggestions from members of EN World. See the thread here: www.enworld.org/forum/4e-fan-creations-house-rules/264113-demon-pact-warlock.html
Thanks to Nifft, Garthanos, AbdulAlhaz and Mentat55 for their comments and critique! 

mustrumr.livejournal.com/1742.html
mustrumr.livejournal.com/1881.html

I have to split the entry a little, since their are size restrictions to live journal posts apparently. 
( Read more )

This is something I have been working on and off for a while. It is not perfect yet, but what ever is? ;)

Demon Pact

Warlock Pacts are always dangerous. Warlocks risk their souls and their sanity, dealing with otherworldly, often barely understandable or relatable creatures. 
Pacts with Demons are no less risky. Demons respect agreements only as long as they feel they have to. They rule by fear and power, and they shortest moment of weakness might be enough to bring a demon against one. 
A pact with a demon requires the Warlock to imbue himself with abyssal energy, possibly drinking demonic blood and making sacrifices. It requires a display of strength and hatred that a demon can respect, but it also requires offering the demon in return - the demon excepts a vessel for him or his bretheren, as to give the demon a chance to rampage this world. 

A Warlock that loses control over the traces of demonic blood and abyssal energies inside him can be overcome by them, losing control over his body and becoming a mere passenger as a demon achieves control. There is just one advantage - demons don't care for your sanity or your soul, so those are safe... Provided the Warlock can deal with the actions of depravity the demon performs while in control, and doesn't get consumed by his emotions of hatred and anger. 

A Warlocks best chance to avoid such a thing happening is to serve as an agent of destruction for the demons. More so than most Warlocks, a demon pact warlock will always consider violence as an option to both serve his own goals and to calm the abyss inside him.

Demon Pact Warlock Powers

Unlike most Warlocks, Demon Pact Warlocks focus on melee and close attacks. Most of the daily powers related to the Demon Pact Warlock are polymorph powers that improve his melee abilities, more specifically his Demon Claw Pact power. His Elemental Corruption ability makes it more risky for enemies to engage him in melee, which could otherwise limit his mobility and as such his abilities as a Striker.

( Read more... )

So, together with my friend TheClone I am thinking about some design concepts for a space combat system that provides something to do for every character. 

Our goal is to define roles that work in a space combat scenario, similar to the D&D 4E combat roles for characters.
It is an unfortunate experience in many systems that feature space combat that some player characters are just not that relevant in combat - learning to fly a spacecraft, fire its weapons or maintain it requires an investment in game resources that will cost you in other areas.
Our ideas can't really make that impossible, since how you learn skills, feats, talents, maneuvers or powers in a system can vary considerably. My personal ideal is that a system allows developing abilities relevant for space combat without too many sacrifices in other areas. 

Our system doesn't attempt to solve this, but it more focused on what you can achieve once you have some resources to spend on space combat abilities - what kind of roles can a character take. 
We have defined 4 roles. One could come up with more, one could come up with less, but 4 turns out a good number and should also support typical player groups better that like to cover all roles. 
The roles we have settled on for now are: 

• Commander (Leads the crew, providing bonuses to actions, reads combat situation)
• Engineer (Makes repairs and boosts systems, manages ship resources)
• Gunner (Locks on targets, looks to disable enemy weapon systems and apply other conditions, detects cloaked or concealed ships)
• Pilot (improves maneuverability or speed, performs evasive maneuvers or assumes better attack positions, performs special maneuvers normally not available)

Our idea is to keep the system abstract for as long as possible to describe general concepts, balancing concerns and the interaction and effect of roles and the player activities on the ship, without going into the details of a specific space combat or roleplaying system. Primarily, we have a vague notion of using a "d20 Modern based on 4E" combined with Morrus SpaceFight for an example implementation later, but we are still far from that, mostly in the brainstorming phase now. Most of our brainstorming so far has been on ICQ, but now TheClone has made some space on his Wiki for it. 

Hi, I am new here... This blog is devoted to roleplaying games mostly, but also some other "geeky" stuff as it comes up. If you don't know what roleplaying games are, Google and Bing are just around the corner. Recently, I am playing a lot of the 4th Edition of D&D, but I also like other game systems (recently played ones would be: Cyberpunk, d20 Modern, Dragon Warriors, before 4E 3E D&D...), but I really enjoy 4E and so a lot of my RPG stuff will focus on this.

I mostly opened a livejournal account to finally look into the Open Design project "Hall of the Mountain King", but then I started contemplating on whether I should move my blog on EN World to LiveJournal.
The Rich-Text editing functionality of LiveJournal is very attractive, since it makes it a lot easier to copy the rules stuff from my Open Office Document to my blog. I haven't made a final decision yet.
I am not exactly someone that manages to have a regular schedule of blog entries, but maybe I can improve on that.

My blog on EN World focuses on roleplaying game related stuff. Sometimes its some new rules stuff, sometimes its just some more "theoretical" thoughts about game design. I don't really want to change that, that's the kind of stuff I like writing about. Livejournal should just serve to improve the quality of the presentation.

As an example and Teaser for something I am working on - A new D&D 4 Warlock Pact - the Abyssal Pact.

Demon Claw		Warlock Attack 1
Your hand and implement transform into powerful demonic claws.
At-Will	Arcane, Implement
Standard		Melee Touch
Target: One Creature
Attack: Constitution +2 vs AC
Hit: 1d10+CON damage. 21th level: 2d10+CON damage.
Augmentation: Certain Warlock powers grant you additional benefits when using Demon Claw.
Special: This attack counts as a basic melee attack.