2nd ed. Opinions on home rules

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GeneralRykof
Posts: 16
Joined: Tue Jan 29, 2019 9:24 am

Hey everyone,

So I posted about a month ago about some additions I was making to the career system in second edition in regards to special talents for each career, which I have made some progress on. Now I also have some other home brew rules that I have taken from both several greatly creative individuals from strike to stun and lots of other sources I've been able to scrounge up online, and of course a ton from zweihander which I look up to a lot.

I was looking for some discussion on what you guys, who I look at as something of experts on the subject, as to what you think on paper would work well and what you think will lead to issues either immediately or down the road.

One of my main concerns is with damage. I really loved the idea of adding degrees of success to damage since it makes perfect sense that a trained swordsman has the ability to do more harm with a skilled strike than a peasant. However it has made combat waaayyyy more deadly which I also love but I fear it may be almost too much where every other hit is almost a one shot leading to you losing all wounds. One idea I had for this was maybe changing damage to a d6 instead? Not sure but let me know!

https://docs.google.com/document/d/19yY ... sp=sharing
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Hyarion
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One, I would encourage you to look at changing Initiative from 1d10+Ag to 1d10+Agility Bonus (Agility Bonus being the 10's digit of an Agility Score, like Strength Bonus or Toughness Bonus) . It does a great job of making things a bit more varied instead of turning your Agile characters into "Parry sponges".

I am not a fan of Zweihander's (I think) Order/Chaos track (Particularly the Order side). I don't think fate points should be that easy to acquire, but that could be a personal preference.

I also like the idea of incorporating SL in the damage calculation, but I use it a bit differently. Instead of 1d10+SL+Str+WeaponBonus, look at 1d10 + (SL -OR- Str) +WeaponBonus. That way it remains higher than just rolling a d10 but not so high that every hit is quite so bad. This allows for a distinction between a weaker finesse fighter or a unskilled brute like a troll or giant.


**Edited for Rykof's excellent suggestion**
Last edited by Hyarion on Fri Mar 01, 2019 7:22 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Orin J.
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i think the most important thing would be to limit the degree of countering attacks players get, to encourage them to move around more rather than trying to focus on getting all their attacks out to overcome the other side's defenses, rather than adding to their damage.

but another way might be to make skill a "mitigating factor" rather than a bonus, maybe by having a flat minus to the d10 roll that's reduced by your levels of success up to full potential or having your STR bonus be "potential" damage that's confirmed by success levels so glancing hits are blows you can't get your muscle into.
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Hyarion
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Orin, that's a brilliant idea.
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GeneralRykof
Posts: 16
Joined: Tue Jan 29, 2019 9:24 am

Yeah I'm not sure about the alignment system that I took from zweihander. I wanted to try it out since it seemed like a nice way to mechanically measure a way to earn fate points which in 2e there is not a way to do this other than slip your DM a twenty. I like systems that can be mechanically controlled and tracked as opposed to things in games that just say "do this whenever you feel like it". But I have had to change the system from zweihander in order to have it work with insanity points as opposed to corruption points which zweihander uses. So since it's different I'm not sure how well balanced the speed of progression/regression is yet.

I kinda like the idea of no str bonus but then using it as a max for degrees of success. That changes things a fair bit.
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Orin J.
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GeneralRykof wrote: Thu Feb 28, 2019 4:06 pm -measure a way to earn fate points which in 2e there is not a way to do this other than slip your DM a twenty.
man, do i ever wish my group had done that instead of crying about it at the games store until i was guilted into handing some over by the owner. i'd be rich!
GeneralRykof
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Joined: Tue Jan 29, 2019 9:24 am

Haha yeah exactly. When you leave a decision like that up to just the whim of your dm then when a player dies and doesnt have any fate points it opens things up for the player to blame you for not giving them out. If it is part of a mechanic that can be tracked then you and the player both can look at it and know exactly why you didn't have any more fate points. So I'm not sure about the alignment system but I do know I want something similar at least.

Besides the speed is still controllable by the dm to a degree since they'll gain order ranks more slowly or even start slipping towards a disorder based on how many insanity points you give out.

The issue I have with not giving str bonus to damage but using it as a max for degrees of success is that this kind of ruins the type of character or monster that is the low skill brute. Take the giant for an extreme example the monster has a very low WS something like 28 I think but relys on hard hits from it's 60 something strength. This would pretty much trivialize his greatest advantage. Same with a character who does the same. I like to try and keep all rules equal across the board so all my enemies play by the same rules as my players so that brings up some issues there for me.

Which then leads me to think that maybe the player should like was suggested by Hyarian, have a choice but rather choose between the degrees of success and the d10 (where the d10 has a much larger chance of being bigger) what if you got to choose between your str bonus OR your degrees of success. Str bonus is on average going to be 3 points extra for a player. So that means you'd have to get like 4 degrees of success to make it better... still not that great since that's pretty rare but I think we're getting close.
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Hyarion
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GeneralRykof, great distinction. Thank you.
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Orin J.
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GeneralRykof wrote: Fri Mar 01, 2019 6:39 am The issue I have with not giving str bonus to damage but using it as a max for degrees of success is that this kind of ruins the type of character or monster that is the low skill brute. Take the giant for an extreme example the monster has a very low WS something like 28 I think but relys on hard hits from it's 60 something strength. This would pretty much trivialize his greatest advantage. Same with a character who does the same. I like to try and keep all rules equal across the board so all my enemies play by the same rules as my players so that brings up some issues there for me.
fair enough, i've never had a problem having the monsters play with different rules than the players since they have entirely different roles to fill, myself! keeping my idea in theme of mitigation (to avoid turning it into a simple "do better" buff) what if success levels let damage get through a successful parry, maxing out to the STR bonus? this would let high STR monsters threaten even well-equppped players more with the threat of a lucky blow seriously wounding them.

GeneralRykof wrote: Fri Mar 01, 2019 6:39 amWhich then leads me to think that maybe the player should like was suggested by Hyarian, have a choice but rather choose between the degrees of success and the d10 (where the d10 has a much larger chance of being bigger) what if you got to choose between your str bonus OR your degrees of success.
it doesn't seem like much of a choice. unless your players have a truly massive amount of advances, the odds side heavily in favor of the dice and it means larger monsters will be more easily mathed away since they'll have little reason to gamble on extra damage. not to mention you're making the game much less lethal by removing the STR bonus to have them choose between that and the dice for how much damage is added..
GeneralRykof
Posts: 16
Joined: Tue Jan 29, 2019 9:24 am

Yeah I just like keeping everything on a level play field. Just personal preference for how i like my games. The players are nobody special and so have to play by the same rules as everyone and everything else! If this was d&d or a game where the players are the chosen ones then I'd be more willing to change that.

Yes! Now that I can get behind. I like that idea. A piercing mechanic that goes through dodge and parries. A well trained swordsman can with a well placed blow render a parry or dodge less effective. Has a good feel to it. The issue I see however is that for one, if you get through with an attack and have lets say 2 degree's of success which is probably pretty average, then you would do what? 2 points? Well that is never going to hurt anything because almost everyone has a TB of 3. So you'd have to have 4 degree's of success to even have it matter and that's against an enemy with NO armour?

You could make it so that you still add your SB to the degree's of success. So a person with SB 3 with 2 degree's of success would inflict a 5 wound hit onto an enemy, where if that enemy has 3 TB and 1 armour point then they would take 1 wound. That seems pretty decent. Again though that favors people who parry over those who dodge, because if you are relying on dodge then you are most likely an agility character who is going to have lower armour so those degree of success hits are going to really hurt you as opposed to somebody with 3 armour points who would have to have a VERY skilled swordsman to actually get any damage through. This makes it become almost impossible to not take wounds which I'm not sure if I like the idea that you can't avoid damage even if you succeed at the check that is designed to save you.

And again somebody in full plate would NEVER have to worry about this damage since with 5 armor and 3 TB somebody would have to have like 5 degrees of success to even scratch you. Vice versa if you have it go through armor and TB all together then there still becomes an issue of this damage that you are helpless to avoid and I'm not sure a player would like being powerless to stop something no matter how good their rolls and or characters skills are.

I feel like we're getting close to something great but are not quite there.

EDIT: One thing I've been looking over is how degrees of success are used in other places such as the Advanced Skill List from Liber Fanatica http://www.liberfanatica.net/wfrp_advanced_skills.pdf

In here it counts a regular success as anything between 0-29. And then a Perfect success as 30 or more. Meaning it only becomes relevant if you have 3 or more degree's of success. This could be applied to WS also. I was thinking of having this be an alternative way of triggering Ulrics Fury but then that would be almost too easy since 3 degree's of success isn't THAT hard to do on a WS check, it would probably become more easy to do that than it would be to randomly roll a d10. And I don't know if what the game needs is MORE Ulrics Fury. But maybe it could just give a bonus to damage of some sort. Or some kind of benefit like it pierces TB if you get the 3 degree's of success. This way WS and BS play by the same rules also that the rest of the skills in the game do since i already use this chart for my other skill rolls.
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