>>318072
Steal a little from science?
Cobalt comes in poisonous compounds, is blue, and is reasonable to build up in a biological system.
They have a better system for eliminating and storing poisons than the usual- instead of just passing them on through, they store them up? Include a diet that customarily involves lots and lots of poisonous and venomous bits...

>>318076
Of course, what I posted is merely what the moajority of the race does. There are still plenty of Terran who abscond to the forests to be taught by the Elemeis or Ijosai, and Ijosai that seek a life of quiet contemplation in the roosts of the Tengu, etc.

>>318079
>>318075

I like the idea of making it somewhat sciency; and possibly giving them some kind of resistance to poisons or magic. The academy is supposed to have a very dark underground full of intrigue and murder anyway. (think like a huge chess/go game, with the objective being to be the wealthiest and most powerful mage)

For the Cranid (the bug people), I feel like the biggest focus is the fact that they'll have chitinous exoskeletons, and possibly a set of extra micro-arms for finer work. as for being quadrupedal...it's possible but unlikely; without giving them some bonus to certain combat skills it'll feel hollow.

I was thinking about weapons and proficiencies and came up with this; basically a weapon has a series of "types" that it's associated with (think like tags or whatnot), and if you have 2 or more of the tags, you are considered proficient. If you have 1, you only take a -2 to attack, instead of a -4.

To be concise, remember that threat is both the ability for a weapon to do damage, and it's ability to bypass armor.

Here are the running types for weapon proficiency, and tendencies associated with them. Weapons can have more than one proficiency type.

Blade/Sword (Need a good name for this...do daggers fall into this category?)
Pretty self explanatory in shape. Swords boast moderate threat and high crit chance.

Axe
Again, self explanatory. Axes have high threat and high crit chance; but tend to have higher strength requirements, as well as slower recovery.

Hammer(Mace/Pick/Adz) (Need a good catchall name for this one)
See above. Hammers have high threat and high crit multiplier; but as above, tend on the slow side, with higher strength requirements

Spear
Ahdoi. Spears have both a high critical multiplier, and a higher critical chance, but tend on the slow side and don't do very good threat.

Light
Light weapons are designed for finesse and skill, not necessarily brute strength. Low Strength requirements, and shorter recovery times, but they tend to have lower threat.

Heavy
Heavy weapons are designed to cleave through armor, bone, and flesh in equal measures. High strength requirements, coupled with slow recovery are balanced by significantly higher threat.

Polearm
Weapons with a long haft, like longspears, naginata, and halberds. They double the range of a character's melee attack, and require 2 hands to operate effectively.

Flail
Weapons with a flexible section somewhere along the length. Often useful for tripping or disarming.

Thrown
Weapons designed to be thrown at a target.

Any suggestions for modifications/additions? I'm all ears.

>>318108
How about a thing that gives bonuses based on proficiencies for fightypeeps?
Things that you can apply axe proficiency to get +1 Threat, or spear proficiency applicable weapons get +1 Crit damage or the like. The idea being that you could stack up with QUINTUPLE AXEMANGLERMASTER OF AWESOME or go the stupidly exotic route and have THE OMNIWEAPON.
Just idle thinking.
I think you can get away with slipping daggers under swords, or even just giving people automatic dagger proficiency, then just better options for mastering. I mean, medieval society, you'd use them for eating, too.

>>318108
It would fit better for a tankier insectile or even crustacean race, but having the larger limbs be unwieldy but strong and the smaller ones weak but finer would be cool. I'd just say make them mantid and include fearsome claws.

>>318113
That's actually the idea, is that a Warrior picks proficiency that they get bonuses on attack and hit. I can see what you mean, making it so that the types give different bonuses, I'll keep it mind, but I'm worried about new players getting confused, or being buried with tables.

As for the Cranid; I was thinking of giving them 4 arms, 2 macro-arms with about the same basic strength as a Terran, with 3 fingers and an opposable thumb each, and then two micro-arms with a similar configuration, but smaller (1/3 the size or smaller) and with much more dexterity and far less strength. The microarms would be linked to the thorax, under the primary arms. They will probably have some kind of mandibles as well, which host a set of spinnerets that they use to produce rope/string/twine. Said material is similar to silk, and is their main material export. The arms, in Pathfinder terms, would be considered to be tiny-sized, meaning they'd have problems wielding pretty much any weapon, but the inherent dexterity bonus to disable device or similar checks would be worth it. In addition, I'd probably make the males a bit on the short size, with the females being sexually dimorphic (larger, and probably with some kind of elongated, prehensile antennae.) Might be interesting to introduce a effectively matriarchal society, just to mix things up.

If I get a chance, I'll sketch up some concepts for the different races this weekend.

But yeah, keep asking me questions, especially about the races' various features; the more you guys do, the more I formulate ideas based on those questions.

>>318117
Suggesting as a means of keeping the weapon choice feeling separate later on.
If the speardude only has a +2 or -2 to how things work because everything else is increasing at the same rate, then it doesn't feel very different. If he's got an easier path to getting crit bonus damage but a larger gap, or if the axedude is always dealing more damage, then it's a little different.

>>318108
An example to see if I understood: A short sword, like a Gladius, would be associated with Light and Blade. Is that correct?
Are the descriptions are meant to describe the group of weapons or what the proficiency brings the char?

>>318117
On the Cranid, that arm setup suggests to me they cannot use their Dex bonus with the big arms.

>>318120
On the first point, you are correct and rather astute, as for the Cranid's Dex bonus, I suppose you have a point; though in most circumstances they would be using their ancillary arms anyway. Maybe just give them extra fingers?


I'll begin working on the lore this week; and I'll be posting some creation myth stuff and magic theory (yes, the magic will vaguely make sense)

So, I was looking at a few article son making RPGs (mostly design stuff, but a few neat concepts on system design) and hit upon an article of some use. I'mma try to answer it's checklist as I go down.

>Design the basic system first, before any tables/charts/etc.

Basic system is, to perform an action, you roll a d20, and add a relevant modifier, versus a Difficulty Check. If you meet or exceed, you succeed at performing the action. All else, failure. Most times there are changes to the degree of success or failure depending on how much you pass or fail by.

>Know what your damage types are, how that damage can be mitigated.

Damage comes in the following, Types and subtypes

Physical Damage (unsure as to if I want to categorize them byt he woudns they make or the classical names)
-Slashing/Laceration
-Bludgeoning/Concussion
-Piercing/Puncture
Energy Damage
-Arcane (possibly adding more or moving force to Elemental)
--Force
--Psychic (Damage to the mind, not the body)
-Elemental
--Heat (Fire and heat)
--Cold
--Corrosive (Added here because of issues with Armor)
--Electric
--Sonic
-Diametric (Need a better name for healing/negative energy)
--Vital (Restores life)
--Entropic (Preserves death)

Armor can reduce physical damage due to allowing higher Fort versus Threat. Runic spells/armor can deflect/reduce threat from elemental sources.

Resistances give a creature bonuses to Fort against that particular damage source, while
Weaknesses reduce their Fort versus a source.

> Find your averages, use those to base everything else off of.

Average in each Attribute; +1-ish

Class BAB at level 1; +1 (average)

Class BDB at level 1; +1 (average)

Average to-hit; +2

Average defense; +2

Average Save score; +1

Average Fort v Threat +3 (Adding leather armor)

So, according to http://anydice.com/program/fb0 an average character versus an average level 1 character only does damage about 45% of the time, but hits 60% of the time.

That's about 5% less than I was expecting, but when you figure in additional Strength, armor.

Please, feel free to play around with the values and see what you get.

>>318189
Explain the difference between 'Force' and 'Bludgeoning + Magic'.
I think you could get away with a generic 'Arcane' damage type that's caused by just throwing raw magic at people and seeing what happens.
Whereas blades of force just deal slashing damage, but hit ghosts, or the like.
As for 'Diametric'... Planar? Balance Forces? Make up a magic sounding term to note the pair with? You should probably do that for everything in the fluff, as I'm assuming the savants have figured at least this much of the system out.

http://anydice.com/program/fb1

My bad. fixed the chart.

I may just have Arcane as it's own energy type.

Force is pretty lame, considering it's just the arcane form of physical damage.

As for pure Arcane energy; I'm thinking Electrical is effectively the pure form of arcane energy; though that meas I should change it to such.

I would agree with taking force out of the magical list. any spells doing force damage should resolve according to the physical damage they do.

But I don't think Arcane should be the same as Electrical. I think you should keep Arcane and put transformational and (un)binding magic in that category.

>>318193
That's a whole other set of questions, though.
What kind of damage is 'Making one section of a thing grow faster than the rest'? What about 'Imma turn just your arm into lava, have fun with the flaming doom etc.'?
I'd say psychic, arcane for just straight up tossing balls of magic, then an untyped bit that's a catchall for 'Buggered if I know what resists this, just run with the usual defenses' and make it rarer.

>>318200
I was thinking more 'turn into a chicken', 'turn to stone' and 'make your legs grow together' kind of spells with transformational. And with (un)binding things like 'rip your soul straight out of your body', attribute damage and planar shifting.

>'Making one section of a thing grow faster than the rest'
That is pretty much Laceration.
>'Imma turn just your arm into lava'
That I would put under arcane,
>'have fun with the flaming doom etc.'
while this falls under heat.

Maybe it is a different view of magic, but I think straight uncontrolled magic would do arcane damage by way of unbinding the usual laws of the world.

Entropic energy would basically be doing damage to the body/soul connection of living creatures, where Vital energy would be knitting flesh and fusing bone, reinforcing the connection between the vital soul and living body.

I think I will have Arcane as a "catchall" thing for the stuff that really does end up being "buggered if I know." Pure energy causing the skin of a living creature to slough off would be the kind of thing I mean, or causing the body's own systems to attack themselves, reversing the digestive system, making the mind recoil in horror, etc, etc.

>>318204
Dichotomous, have a serpent god handling life and death in the fluff and call them Ourborotic Powers, Dualistic Powers, the Dark and Light sides of a singular Force (lolololol) or something along those lines?

Also, turning someone into raw arcane energy, then trying to siphon it off while they desperately try to hold themselves together with willpower.

So, melee combat is pretty figured.

For armor, how should we figure it? The way I have it now is that armor adds to fort saves against threat from physical attacks. Light armors provide +1 to +3 Armor, Medium armors provide +3 to +5, Heavy armors provide +5 to +7. Armors have penalties to Movement, Dexterity and Agility, depending on how they are made.

I'm concerned that armor provides too much defense against physical attacks, compared to a player's average threat. Anyone have an idea on how to fix this issue besides adding to the base number for threat?

>>318192
Not sure where the problem is exactly, but that is wrong. For the to-hit you are doing 1d20+5>=14. 1d20+5 is a discrete uniform distribution with a probability of 0.05. There are eight rolls below 14, namely [6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13], and 12 equal or greater 14. Hitting has a probability of 0.6, missing a probability of 0.4. How much damage you roll does not influence how often you miss. I think this http://anydice.com/program/fc8 shows how attacks resolve for the example. It's about 65% of attacks deal no damage, 35% deal damage.

>>318223
If you still think you need to lower the effect of armor, you could raise the threat of weapons by using multiple dice with less faces instead of one die with many faces. That raises the mean slightly.
Lowering the base fortitude is another way, but that's just a mirror of raising base threat.

Argh. I keep doing silly things.

Yes, you are right that is the correct way of doing it; after I set up an equation in excel, it became obvious I was doing it wrong before.

I've been building up a list of weapons, and wanted to know if you had any ideas on racial weapons, or just weapons in general.

The way that I'm figuring it is this,

Threat
The average amount of hurt a weapon does compared to other weapons.

Crit Range
The likelihood of the weapon hitting an internal organ, severing a artery, etc.

Crit Mult
The chance it will kill outright on a critical due to severe damage.

Time
How heavy the weapon is, which effect recovery, or how hard it is to handle. (Flails tend to be hard to handle, and have a higher Time Increment)

Min STR
How heavy the weapon is, basically. Often tied to Time.

>any ideas on racial weapons
For Elemeis perhaps weapon gloves and boots/foot gloves. And unless Mortei don't tight each other, they might have a preference toward weapons with a pick-like spike.

How do you determine if a crit happened? If you explained it already, I missed it. For that matter could you explain the entire crit matter in this system? You posted a bit of the weapon side in >>318014, but I didn't find the system spelled out.

>Time
>How heavy the weapon is, which effect recovery, or how hard it is to handle. (Flails tend to be hard to handle, and have a higher Time Increment)
>Min STR
>How heavy the weapon is, basically. Often tied to Time.
Do you intend to give boni for exceeding minimal requirements? Like lowering time for every x points above minimum? Otherwise you might not give that tied to each other bit. It might also be favorable to not tie minimal requirements to strength alone. Some weapons might use more than strength or allow to substitute strength.

Essentially, right now, crits are handled like any regular d20 system, with weapons having a critical range and a crit multiplier. when you critically hit with a weapon (normally rolling a 20) you roll to confirm. If you beat the target's defense, you successfully, crit, if you don't you instead auto-hit.

When you crit, the weapon's threat die is doubled, tripled, or quadrupled according to the weapon's critical multiplier.

This represents you scoring a lucky hit on a weak point, not necessarily on purpose.

Okay, an attack with crit goes like this? For a weapon with crit on 20 and multiplier 3.

In this case Attacker and Defender will be called A and D
A: Roll to hit: natural 20
A: roll threat, damage=threat*3
D: Roll Fortitude, DC 10+Damage. If fails, take 1 wound. If fails by increments of 5, add 1 wound to damage taken. If pass, no damage taken.

>>318248
I concur with >>318250
Have the Min line just have the requirements for using it competently. X much strength, Y much Dex, Z much whatever else.
Also, (going back to the absurdly exotic weapons idea earlier) magic weapons that increase the base stats of the weapons- A ten foot club made of spelled bricks and mortar with absurd time and absurd minimum strength; a staff-scythe-sword-chain that holds the spirit of a demonic snake with median time but very high dex requirements to keep it from biting the shit out of you while you're using it.

I do like the idea of being able to change the way magic effects the weapons, instead of "oh you do more damage and to hit, hurr durr" but then again, I'm going to make it absolutely normal for magic weapons to have requirements in order for the, to activate, in keeping with the theme that most magical weapons in this world are made by effort of the user, not by some enchanter in a stuffy room.

I'm wondering if I should set out rules for the implementation of magic weapons, for example, every time a weapon successfully kills a magical creature it has a 1 in 100 chance of becoming magical in some sort of way?

At any rate, I'm thinking that it might be time to look at skills.

Before I blow up this thread with my own idea,s I'd like to mine yours, to see where I'm at compared to you all. Try to answer all of these, if you can manage.

What kind of skills would you like to see? Why?
What would you change from the basic Pathfinder/D&D paradigm? Why?
How should combat maneuvers be handled; pathfinder style, as a skill, or as a class ability?
With the addition of Agility, what skills should get relegated to Dex, and what get relegated to Agility?
Should concentration be a skill, or should it be based on static stats, like Will?

>>318264
This might be a little odd, but I think you can do it either with XP or crafting XP or some kind of resource you gain along the way intrinsic to the character that's not just gold. Gold may play the story part of how the item was received, though.
The idea being that you simply accumulate points for going on adventures and being awesome, and then you tell the DM at a certain point "Hey, I want to change in my points for a sword the size of a plowshare with a bit that flies off and cuts off faces and also there's straps for putting a live viper on it to bite while I smite and I have X points to spend on this- To fit my character, I think winning it at cards would be a fitting origin, and it was very briefly owned by a king who commissioned it from dwarves."
And the DM goes "Hmm. Well, you don't really have the points to build it yet, but I can add a drawback to make up for that, yeah, winning it at cards makes sense, and there might be some strings attached later."
If the thingus is too powerful, the DM takes it back and returns the points, which they can then spend on another thing.
It's a little narrative driven, but I think it has a decent chance of working.
Not sure how to make it interact with loot, though.

And of course, they could say "Since I've been slaying vampires with my silver-chain whip for many years, Imma spend some points to make it really awesome against vampires. No, I mean REALLY AWESOME against vampires. Let's see, eats some life force maybe kinda, only usable by my bloodline, what else..." as well.

>>318265
It's sort of based on an idea I had a while back for a system of magic to attempt to balance out fighters and casters. Everyone has a Mana score, normally you don't do much with it. Wizards can burn mana to cast big effects, which regens at some constant rate. Everyone else commits mana to magic items to power them- The fighter powers his own armor, sword and weapons. The rogue commits mana to his boots and is silent of foot. Etc.
Committing would take some time to establish and undo, and there would be options for increasing natural mana, and the like.

I've been building up an idea of how I want skills basically to work, so that they are both utilizable in combat and role play settings.

I'm of two minds about this, with things like perception or acrobatics, that hold lots of things under one roof. Do I consolidate them into smaller sets like this, or do I allow a greater expansion of skills, at the risk of promoting overspecilization and complication?

One thing I'd like to introduce are "exceeds" where a character can exceed their regular abilities. for example, a character wishes to move much more quickly than usual over land, and rolls an acrobatics. He bids that he is aiming to go 5 squares instead of the usual 3. If he rolls under the check, he fails, in this case tripping and falling prone.

Any ideas?

>>318267
I'd suggest having the basic skills, then having them be moderately hard to raise, but it's much, much easier to get minor specialisations, approved by the DM.
So you can only stack so many points in Perception, but you can note under it that you get a much larger bonus to 'Spotting Specific People In A Crowd So I Can Shoot Them' or 'Seeing People I'm Fighting In The Dark' or 'Noticing Things About Antiques'.
Then you just bicker out with the DM about what applies in each situation.
Might slow things down, though.

I'd consider those situational bonuses based on occupation. For example, a skilled tailor would receive bonuses to notice a man from the cut of his suit and his build, even through a mask or similar disguise. I've been fleshing out occupations for a bit, I promise not to fall prey to the multissitude of FATAL's occupation system.

I'm unsure how I want to award skill points. and I honestly dislike the idea that in order for you to be acrobatically inclined, you need to be an intellectual. Muscle memory is equally about insinct and determination as it is intellect, if not mroe, and so I'm trying to think of a way of breaking the skills up into different types.

I may break it into categories, as such

Learned skills
Skill which require intellectual study, rote memorization, and conceptual analysis.

Experiential skills
Skills which require real-life experience, observation from life, and trial and error.

Physical skills
Skills which require physical practice, rigorous training, and a level of innate skill.

In this way, players who are physically skilled would be able to allocate skills to their areas of expertise, but would be limited in intellectual or experiential pursuits to a greater or lesser degree.

>>318269
Have skills under two or more categories of difficulty, based on class? Like cross class skills.
Rogues can buy Acrobatics, Stealin' Shit, and Hit Magic Stick On Rock Until It Works much more cheaply than the fighter, but the fighter can buy Run For Fucking Ever In Heavy Armor And Shit and Basic First Aid Stuff Come On This Should Be Standard more cheaply, while both have to pay a premium on Shit From Dusty Old Tomes No One Really Cares About and Proper Magic Stick Maintenance That Doesn't Involve Rocks At All Honest that the wizard doesn't.
Class-specific skill lists would seem to do most of that job, unless you have a build your own class thing.

Also, the "Exceeds" seem like a good idea, but I don't know how to tie it to skills, other than to have the regular combat uses noted under the skill.

For awarding Skill points, you could give everyone a fixed amount of points, say 20. Increasing a skill costs a certain amount, but you can use your attribute modifier to lower the amount. Minimum cost is 1 point, without modifier cost is perhaps 4 points. With STR +3 you can raise any skill, which you can apply the STR mod to when rolling, for 1 skill point. With STR -2 any strength skill costs 6 skill points.

That allows you to advance the skills related to your good attributes pretty fast, while all skills of your bad attributes rise slowly. And the better or worse the attribute, the faster or slower skill progress is.

I was actually gonna base it off of level/class like fort ref and will are. I'm not sure how I'd break them up, physical and experiential both feel like Wisdom based, with academic obviously being intellect.

So, small changes to the game;
I've made it so initiative is based off of reflex. This means Dexterity has relevance to melee combative players again.
Fortitude is based on Con, still.

I'm thinking I might remove weapon dice, and have all weapons have a straight threat rating. I want your opinions on this.

What that would mean is, each weapon would have a threat rating, which you would add your strength, plus ten. The target would then make a Fort save versus the threat, and if he passes, would take no damage.

I need votes yay or nay on this, if you would be so kind.

>>318274
I think it would make attacking not feel active enough.
I could sort of see it the other way around...

>>318274
>I've made it so initiative is based off of reflex. This means Dexterity has relevance to melee combative players again.
This I've got no problem with. Personally I'd support making DEX available as STR alternate for chars, too. Things like weapons that accept either DEX or STR for the minimum requirement.

>fixing threat instead of rolling
Mechanically it makes the fortitude roll similar to the to-hit roll. But I don't think it'll work that well. At least with the numbers you used so far.

From armor you planned for a maximum of +7 fortitude, which is the heavy armor, the char will likely need good strength for. There might be a so far undetermined racial bonus or malus. I think that is everything you mentioned that can influence the fortitude roll.
On the other hand you the attacker gets a flat 10 + STR bonus to the threat. It doesn't only result in damage more often, it also make the damage greater.
In the anydice.com examples replacing the 1d8+1 with 8+1 eliminates the critical failures on the fortitude roll. You get three wounds double as often as before and you plan for 5+CON wounds for a char. You'll either have to up the wounds a good deal or lower the threats noticeable. Otherwise I expect combat to be short with the char landing the first hit to win almost always.

So, updates. I've figured out how to do a lot of stuff for combat, I've worked out the classes for the most part, and I'm slowly chopping away at skills and magic.

Some primary heads ups; healing is transmutation-type until further notice, and it not only difficult, but somewhat dangerous and time-consuming; it's effectively like magic surgery. This prevents the "rich guy paradox" with some old fogey buying clerical services and living forever, and makes certain abilities I have planned more awesome.

Ok, so, classes.

Fury;
I've basically sounded out whatt he fury does, and how he/she does it. The Fury is like a barbarian, except instead of just a static bonus to stats, the Fury takes on the "Visage" of a specific creature, tied to the character's backstory, history, or some such. Some ideas include Elemental, Feral, Fey, Demonic, Angelic, Ghost, and Draconic. At about level 10, a Fury transforms into an aspect of that visage; An angelic creaturewith wings and fly, a Demonic creature with some kind of evil gaze/captivate power, a Fey with silly-hillarious spell-like abilities, etc.

Warrior; Tweaked from fighter in that he has a list of nested abilities (think like modern's class traits) which allow him to focus on armor, weapon, or combat maneuver.

Rake; Similar to Warrior, nested abilities, fun-licious rape stuff. Sneak attack isnt' the only option for Rakes, and they are much mroe focused on sneaking, stealth, and tactical actions.

Huner; Similar focus on stealth, but with a penchant for ranged attacks, as well as tracking, and abilities focused on killing a creature that the character marks as a quarry.

Invoker; Since healing isn't divine anymore, I've made this cleric-liek class into a buffer; he provides positives buffs using abilities tied to his faith. He will have a class ability which allows him or assign temporary HP to allies, for short periods of time, as well as giving players bonuses to defense, resistances, and attack.

Loremaster; Inverse to invoker, the loremaster uses deceit, trickery and his encyclopedic knowledge of his enemies to provide debuffs. One of his key abilities will be to analyse an enemy and use his knowledge to give characters in his sight various bonuses versus enemies, or to demoralize enemies.

Mage; Mages pick a favored Composition and Form, and have an ability tree that allows them to explot magic that uses those two types. Example, a Mage with a Composition of Fire, and a Form of Ray, would receive bonuses on casting Fire-Ray spells, Ray spells, and Fire spells. In addition, Mages of sufficient level can use their intellect and skill to redirect enemy magical energy; converting it for their use.

Witch; Intelligent familiars provide magic for casting, and can act as a conduit for the Witch's magical power. A key ability will be bonuses and abilities given by the familiar chosen, which gets stronger as the Witch levels; representing her growing magical power. This familiar also has the ability to attack of it's own accord, and probably can't be killed, so much as temporarily disabled.

Minor tweaks to combat include me building a huuuuge repository of weapons and working on how they act in game so that they are both balanced and realistic; Reflex has replaced initiative, making Rakes and other dex-heavy classes more effective in combat, and making hunters deadly against even moving enemies.

>>318299
Not sure on witch. I'd say make the familiar the power source and the actual character the channel. Familiars being anything from magic powerhouses that happen to look like small animals to fiends/fey/ghosts/angels in disguise (or even not in disguise).
Also, summoning-focused mages?

>>318301
Maybe done by choice of Form. Something like animal, humanoid gives the creature type of summonings, composition gives the realm.

>>318301
See
>>318304

So, some new work on feats.


Full BlowRequires Power AttackWhen weilding a one-handed weapon, a character may make an attack as if weilding it two handed. In return, the time increment of the weapon is doubled.

CleaveRequires Power AttackWhen weilding a cleaving weapon, a character may designate two targets for attack. Both targets must be adjacent to eachother, and within the character's attack range. The first target is attack as normal, the second may be attacked with a -2 penalty to hit.

Power AttackRequires BAB +1A character may take a penalty to their attack to increace their threat. The penalty may never be more than their BAB. This is declared before rolling to hit.

Cleave +Requires CleaveAs Cleave Feat, but you may designate as many targets as you choose. Each is at an additional -2 to hit. All sucessive cleave targets must be adjacent to the target before them.

Cleave, WhirlingRequires CleaveCleave targets do not need to be adjacent.

PunctureRequires Dex +3, PrecisionWhen rolling threat while weilding a precise weapon, forego your Strength to ingore armor. This must be declared before rolling to hit.

PrecisionPrecise weapons with Strength requirements now instead have Dexterity requirements.

All-InRequires Power AttackWhen using Cleave or Power Attack, you may take a penalty to defense for the time increment of your weapon instead of a penalty to hit.

>>318318
Just make sure your physical feats scale well enough to remain relevant without minmaxing or introducing an element of "doing it wrong".

>>318318
>precision
Eh, just stick it on the weapons.

Also slightly worried about Mages being either too utililicious or not enough, as is the usual problem.
And how to work up the spells with better descriptors or make your own.
>Pick Composition: Fire
>Pick Form: Blast
>Make spell that lets you fly by dropping explosions
>Make shielding spell that does precisely timed explosions to deflect attacks

Is Form going to have the most effect on role, or the composition?

>>318324
This raises a very important issue for the purposes of shenanigans: Does fire magic produce force, or does it simply produce heat and set things on fire? This is relevant to cases like whether a fireball is compressed by a small room or narrow hallway, and well as determining whether the uses mentioned above can be done with fire magic or only with force magic.

Also, if you can precisely shape blasts, would that allow you to make blasts that act like shaped charges?

Basically, the way it works is that the fire is made by "converting" energy from raw arcane power into heat or flames. The only "force" is made by the expanding gasse,s of which there is little. Explosions would be Force. I'll be sure to add things like "adjective" type words so that you can add bludgeoning damage to a firebomb, etc.

As for mages being too utilitarian; the idea is that they will be able to cast spells other than their type, but without bonuses associated.

>>318327
I mean trying to cheese spells onto their form and composition with bullshit logic,

The way I'm gonna nerf that is by making it so that you have to add certain words to "power up" your spells.

Basically spells go
[Meta] [Composition] [Form] of the [Modifier]

Meta words enhance the whole spell. Examples include "Reaching" which allows you to cast spells at range what would otherwise not be able to be cast as such. These multiply the mana cost of spells.

Composition words define what the spell is. Compositions are the "root" word, and often have restrictions on what other words are allowed to be used. Some words include "Summon Monster" "Fire" "Transmute Earth"

Form words define the shape of the spell. Touch, Ray, Cone, Line, Burst. Possibly different based on the Comp, so "Summon" has Forms related to what you will summon and costs associated.

Modifiers is where things will get really interesting; and it's also the hardest to balance. They effect spells by adding secondary effects. For example, "Vitriolic" would either add acid damage to a spell(So for Fire Ray of the Vitriolic, you would do Fire/Acid damage. Summon Monster Vitriolic would give all the monster's attacks acid damage, or enhance an acidic monster's HP) or enhance an acid spell's power. This cost often is about the same as the cost of a comprable Composition, but errs on the side of more expensive.

So, to make a fireball that flings enemies, you would have to use something like

Reaching Fire Burst of the Tempest
Reaching, to throw a spell at range.
Fire, the composition.
Burst, the form
Tempest, adding a blast of wind, causing a bull rush attempt to all those caught in the blast.

Opinions? I know it sounds complex, but the idea is, a Mage would have a few words he favors, and gets bonuses to cast, or defend against, and the rest would be picked up like you would pick up spells.

When casting, a Mage makes a mana check VS the cost of the spell+10. If he passes, he doesn't lose any mana, if he fails, he loses 1 mana, if her fails by increments of 5, he loses 1 per increment.

Mana is probably CL+Relevant Modifier, meaning at low levels, you still aint casting anything of any relevance. The idea is, you will be able to cast some cool shit by level 5-6, but you'll end up running outta mana if you pull out the big guns; but that said, you can now cast all those relatively harmless spells repeatedly to do stuff like summon little flies to go look at shit for you.

So, some design work on spells.

Basically, I'm working on finding out hwo spells act, and how much words cost.

Right now I have it as follows;

Compositions
Fire, Cold, Electricity, and Acid all cost 4
Piercing, Bludgeoning, and Slashing cost 3
Touch costs either 1 or 0
Ray costs 1 or 2
Line, Cone and Burst...no clue. I feel like maybe 5-6 works.
Elemental modifiers will probably cost 0-1 more than their regular words. So, For Infernal it would be 4-5.


The idea is, at level 1, you really don't have much available to you except Pierce/Slash/Bludgeon Ray, and elemental touch spells. (1CL+3 or 4 for relevant stat)

At level 5, however, you can cast Fire Cone, which is a damn sight more powerful and does 5d6 threat, or something like Vitriolic Fire Touch (5+4+1) for Fire/Acid devastation.

One of the things I really wanna push is that Mages, and spellcasters in general, have an effective range; beyond it, hunters and warriors can plink them with arrows, but too close and they just get sliced by swords. I'm making them powerful, but a bit hard to handle. That said, when I implement summons and some other stuff, it will make them versatile in response to level of difficulty.

>>318330
Eh... I'd stick it so you can do one or two small things in your best composition/form, otherwise why would you have it?
Not that you should be able to pull off 'LEVIATHAN'S DEATH BLAST OF THE WHALE' at first level, but it seems a bit silly to go 'Alright, I wield the fiery serpents of set-shalam and he's a Royal Shieldmage of the Throne of Alissan and we both plink at things for three more levels until we can actually cast shit that makes us different'
Or even have them limited to a few spells to start with, so their one or two tricks for the first few levels pretty much have to be in their favored form/comp or they'd have to roll ludicrously well to do it.

With the way this works, out of the box you actually are different; because you can choose your preferred composition and form; when you cast those spells, you are treated as if you have more mana than you actually do.

That way fire mages cast fire rays at first level, etc.

The way it works is, the big badass powerful spells you can wield have a 50% chance of you losing mana, meaning you can only cast them once. But in return, they really are pretty damn dangerous.