Weapons

Arms and armor are of course one of the most important features in a medieval-esque RPG. I have several goals in this area: first, most weapons and armor should be equally 'good'; second, I want to incorporate the widest variety of real-world equipment possible; and third, I don't want an excessive number of options. The first I'm going to skip for now; weapon and armor statistics will depend heavily on the scaling of Vitality. The second and third seem initially contradictory, but I think can be made to work together. Basically, wherever two weapons are similar enough that it's difficult to justify different statistics, they will be represented as a single weapon in the rules.

Training in weapons, represented in Pathfinder by Weapon Proficiency, Weapon Focus, Weapon Specialization, and the fighter's Weapon Training, will be incorporated into a series of Weapon Training talents. Each talent will apply to a group of related weapons, such as axes or bows, granting numerical bonuses as well as abilities related to those weapons.

Without further ado, weapon groups and their included weapons (plus maneuvers). I'm not completely happy the way maneuvers are split up; I may make more of them distinct categories instead of including them with certain weapons.

Axes:
Greataxe: any two-handed axe weapon with a relatively short haft.
Battleaxe: a typical one-handed axe, like the ones Vikings are often depicted with.
Handaxe: a short-handled axe, like a hatchet; generally suitable for throwing.
Pickaxe: not technically an axe, but handles similarly; very effective against armor.

Blades
Greatsword: a long two-handed sword, such as a claymore, zweihander, or no-dachi.
Longsword: a long sword with an extended grip allowing it to be wielded in one or two hands, such as a bastard sword or katana
Broadsword: a one-handed edged sword, such as an arming sword or scimitar.
Short sword: a one-handed sword with a shorter blade, such as a gladius, wakizashi, or cutlass.
Rapier: a lightweight sword designed for stabbing.
Dagger: an even shorter blade best for close quarters or throwing.
Swordbreaker: a variant dagger or short sword with notches along the back for disarming and sundering enemy weapons.

Bludgeons
Greatclub: a really big stick, such as a tetsubo.
Club: a stick or some size, such as a baseball bat, lead pipe, or a quarterstaff wielded by someone without much training.
Spiked club: any spiked variant of a club, such as a stick with nails in the end or a morningstar.
Warhammer: a (relatively small), usually pronged hammer backed by a pick. Designed expressly for can-opening, where the can is an armored knight.
Greathammer: a large hammer requiring two hands to wield, such as a sledgehammer.

Bows:
Shortbow: slightly less powerful but also less cumbersome than the longbow; typically composite.
Longbow: more powerful but harder to use bow.

Close:
Dagger: see blades
Gauntlet: this could represent an actual gauntlet as well as brass knuckles and similar devices.
Unarmed strike: while there will be another talent for monk-style 'martial arts', this encompasses basic unarmed attacks
Grapple: maneuvers related to very close combat.
Reposition: a collection of maneuvers involving moving the enemy somewhere else (bull rush, drag, reposition)
Steal:  a maneuver that swipes something from an opponent in combat.
Trip: a maneuver that lets you trip your opponent.

Crossbows:
Heavy crossbow: a heavy-duty crossbow such as an arbalest.
Light crossbow: standard crossbow design.
Repeating crossbow: a variant crossbow that features a small clip and reloading crank, such as the cho-ko-nu.
Hand crossbow: a stealth-sized crossbow, also known as a pistol crossbow.

Flails:
Whip: Indiana Jones. Enough said.
Bladed whip: any sort of blade-on-a-rope/chain weapon. Scorpion whip, kusarigama, spiked chain, etc.
Meteor hammer: any sort of bludgeon-on-a-rope/chain weapon.
Heavy flail: a hinged weapon held in both hands.
Light flail: a hinged weapon held in one hand. Anything from a ball on a chain to nunchucks.

Improvised:
Training in this weapon group removes the penalties for using improvised weapons.
Dirty Trick: maneuvers that inconvenience your opponent, such as throwing sand in their eyes.
Feint: a maneuver that sets up the opponent for your next attack (might be removed)

Polearms:
Glaive: a sword on a stick.
Halberd: an axe on a stick, usually with a spike and a hook.
Guisarme: a spike and a hook.
Pole hammer: a hammer on a stick, usually with a spike and a hook.
Quarterstaff: a stick.
Dismount: a maneuver for unhorsing an opponent.

Shields:
Shield bash: allows attacks using your shield.

Spears:
Pike: a two-handed spear of excessive length.
Longspear: a two-handed spear 8-10 feet long.
Spear: a hand-and-a-half spear, usually wielded with two hands but sometimes thrown or used with a shield.
Shortspear: a one-handed spear designed for quick stabbing motions and/or throwing, such as a javelin or pilum.
Lance: a longspear modified for use while mounted.
Trident: a multi-tined spear.

Thrown:
Javelin/shortspear: as in spears.
Dagger: as in blades. Also includes various other small thrown objects, like shuriken or darts.
Handaxe: as in axes.
Net: used to entangle foes.
Bolas: three balls on a cord, used to entangle foes.
Sling: like David and Goliath.
Spear thrower: an implement to increase the range of javelins.
Blowgun: generally used for delivery of poison.

Weapon Maneuvers:
Demoralize: a maneuver to intimidate your foes with your prowess.
Disarm: a maneuver to disarm enemies.
Sunder: a maneuver to break enemy weapons or armor.

Let me know if you can think of any weapons that aren't represented here!

Critical Hits

This didn't quite fit in the previous post, but I recently had a thought regarding critical hits in my vitality/wounds system. I essentially want to define two types of critical hits. The first is a critical success--a concept borrowed from skill rolls. If you beat your target's DV by a certain amount (probably 5), you deal additional damage, probably equal to your weapon damage but possibly as high as double damage. Success by 10 could result in tripling. However, this damage is still all applied to Vitality unless it's the killing blow. The other type of critical hit is the one players of D&D are familiar with, the natural 20. This type of critical hit would deal wound damage. There's no need for a critical confirmation roll, because the scaling damage depending on how much you hit by already accounts for whether it's a solid hit (only needed a 10 to begin with) or extreme luck (you needed a 19).

This creates room for different weapon abilities related to critical hits. Some weapons could have better chances to deal extra damage--say when you beat the target DV by 4 or 8 instead of 5 or 10. Or they could have different effects on a critical success--maybe you don't get extra damage, but you do get a free trip attempt. Others could have better chances to cause wounds. There are a lot of possibilities, and should make for some nice flavor in the weapon selection.

Core Statistics

Advance warning: this post might be a bit hard to follow. I jump around quite a bit, and may not have explained everything fully. If something doesn't make sense, just let me know and I'll take another look at it. I just wanted to get everything down on paper.

Time to talk about some key combat statistics. This is a tricky part; I've made some changes, and might make quite a few more. I'll talk about the more certain bits first, and then discuss the harder sections.

Attack bonus = Strength + experience - size; compared against Defense Value (DV) = 10 + Dexterity + shield + experience - size

Maneuver bonus = Strength + experience + size; compared against Maneuver Defense (MDV) = 10 + Strength + Dexterity + experience + size

Initiative Bonus: Awareness + Dexterity + experience

For anyone unfamiliar with Pathfinder, maneuver bonus incorporates things like bull rush, trip, and disarm. Armor class has been renamed to defense value (DV) because it no longer includes armor (but does include shields). Actually, armor may grant small bonuses to DV in some cases, but Armor is a completely separate value that I'll come back to shortly.

Now, saving throws. First, I want to split Will saves into Will (mental resistance) and Insight (how hard to fool you are). This opens the possibility of certain Perception checks also being rolled into Insight, but I'm not sure about that. The bigger issue is whether to retain rolled saves (as in Pathfinder) or switch to static defenses (as in 4th edition D&D). I'm fairly attached to rolled saves, because for the most part they represent a character actively resisting an effect, and I feel this trumps consistency with the attack mechanics (where the attacker rolls).

So, going with rolled saves, we get:
Save DCs: 10 + relevant attribute + experience
Fortitude: Constitution + experience + size
Insight: Awareness + experience
Reflex: Dexterity + experience - size
Will: Willpower + experience

These should all work well enough. Now, one of the more significant changes I want to make. The two key resources for every character: vitality and energy. The hit point system of Pathfinder is quite abstract, to the point that it becomes really hard to describe in some situations. The most common solution for this issue is to implement some kind of wounds vs. vitality system, which first appeared in Star Wars d20. Such a system differentiates between real injuries and the type of damage normally represented by hit points--close calls, minor scratches, bruises, energy or luck expended in barely not losing your arm. The main difference in these types of damage is recovery--wounds are much harder to heal. Typically in such a system, wound damage is dealt by critical hits or failed saves, and a player has separate wound and vitality scores. This gives a nice clean measure of how much physical damage your character can take, but introduces mechanical problems where hit points can be 'shortcutted'. At first this seems like a feature, but it ultimately places too much emphasis on critical hits. Another issue I've always had with D&D is that hit point totals get excessive at high levels--as a player or GM, I don't want to deal with 100s of hit points. So, all that said, here is the solution I've come up with:

Vitality: function of both level and tier; you receive a small amount per level, and a larger amount when you enter a new tier. I'm not sure yet where Constitution is added--probably at the tier level to keep the totals reasonable. Lost Vitality is recovered after a short rest (5-10 minutes).
Wounds: When you take critical hits, roll a 1 on a save (maybe), or take vitality damage that would reduce your vitality total below 0, you take that damage as a wound. Your total wound damage is tallied up, rather than being subtracted from a score. If your current Vitality is lower than your current Wounds, the combined damage and fatigue overwhelms you and you fall unconscious. Unless you've taken a significant quantity of Wounds, however, you're not in any immediate danger. 

So in theory, you can take at least as many Wounds as your Vitality total; however, at this point you would be in extreme danger of death. I believe this should make a good balance of heroic survivability and believable damage-taking. Healing magic would distinguish quite a bit between them--in-combat healing would mostly be limited to Vitality boosts, while recovering Wounds requires long-term rest or slower, more powerful magic.

Speaking of magic, that brings me to Energy. I've favored spell-point systems, similar to mana systems found in most computer games, for quite a long time. I should note that there are many examples of poorly-implemented mana systems, such as 3rd edition psionics. However, years back I stumbled across an excellent suggestion to fix this problem--instead of giving a massively expanding pool of spell points to draw from, the spell point cost of spells is reduced as your skills increase. So a basic spell that costs 6 spell points for a 1st-level caster might cost only 2 or 3 spell points for a 10th-level caster. In most circumstances, a spell costs at least 1 spell point, so the character's spell point total places a reasonable limit on spells per day, while the sliding scale means that a character can always cast about the same number of their highest level spells. Most importantly, it does away with the awkward restrictions of traditional D&D spellcasting.

As a side effect of working with a classless system, I ran into the problem of how to handle limited-use abilities. This includes spells, but also abilities such as a barbarian's rage, a bard's song, or any ability that grants X uses per day.  All of these abilities are physically and mentally taxing, and so I decided to have them all run off of the same Energy pool. A character's Energy points will be determined similarly to Vitality--boosts by both level and tier, with bonuses from Willpower. My only issue here is linking it permanently to Willpower--it doesn't make quite as much sense for something like bardic music or barbarian rage as it does for spells (arcane or divine). One thought I had was to define a 'key attribute' for each ability that uses Energy, and have Energy determined off of the highest applicable attribute, but that seems a little convoluted.

Finally, to backtrack a little, I need to talk about armor. I intend to significantly rework the way damage types, resistances, and other related abilities are defined. There are two major types of damage--physical and energy. Physical damage is subdivided into bludgeoning or impact, piercing, and slashing damage, while energy damage divides into fire or heat, cold, electricity, and acid or chemical. A character can gain resistance to any of these damage types through various means, the most common being physical damage resistances from armor. I'm considering different armor types granting different amounts of resistance to each damage types. This seems complicated, but it would be simple enough to have a small box on the character sheet for resistances to each damage source. In such a case, weapons or effects that deal multiple types of damage would target the lowest resistance (at least within the categorization of physical or energy). So, for example, a spiked club that deals both piercing and bludgeoning damage would only be affected by the lower of the defending character's piercing and impact resistances. This mechanic replaces DR/- and DR/any weapon damage from Pathfinder; DR related to special materials (silver, adamantine) and related abilities like fast healing and regeneration will be reworked.

Luck and Wealth

I'd like to briefly discuss the subsystems I have in mind for Wealth and Luck. I've found over years of playing D&D that nothing actually gets tracked below a certain value threshold; food and drink, lodging, ammunition, and other mundane costs are typically ignored after character creation. Some versions of the game have included a monthly upkeep system, which covers that sort of spending depending on your character's lifestyle, but I don't think I've ever seen it used in a game. These issues, combined with my plans for a more early-medieval style setting, led me to consider different ways of handling wealth. In an excellent series of world-building articles written by Rich Burlew (of Order of the Stick fame), he proposed using the abstract Wealth system from d20 Modern for his medieval-level setting, and I found this to be quite an excellent suggestion.

The full d20 Modern Wealth rules can be found here, but I'll give a quick overview. Every character has a Wealth score, typically somewhere between 0 and 30. This value is a combined measure of their savings, credit, and income. For a medieval setting, credit would mostly be replaced by influence--it may be the only way to acquire a magic sword is for the king to grant you one, for example. Every item has a value measured by its "Purchase DC". When you want to acquire an item, you make a Wealth roll: d20 + your Wealth score; if it is higher than the Purchase DC, then you acquire the item. If the Purchase DC of the item is higher than your Wealth score (it is expensive relative to your resources), then your Wealth decreases by 1 or more points after the purchase. On the other side, if the Purchase DC is lower than your wealth score, you don't even have to roll--it's assumed to be well within your budget. There are a few additional details--you can make a Profession roll at level-up to gain additional wealth, for example--but that's the basis of the system.

Now for luck. This particular idea came from a house rule I saw posted on the Paizo forums. This group had a rule called luck or karma. Each character has a Luck score that starts at 10. Any time there's an element of chance (such as a wandering monster roll), the most appropriate character rolls a d20. If they roll higher than their Luck score, things go their way and their Luck score increases by one (making them less likely to get lucky the next time). If they roll lower, things don't turn out the way they want and their Luck score decreases by one. This seems like a fun way to handle this sort of thing, rather than by DM fiat, and so I'd like to give it a try. There's also potential for traits or talents based on manipulation of Luck scores, such as a character that could add 5 to their Luck score (resulting in future 'bad luck') in return for a bonus on a roll.

Setting Brainstorming

 This is just me throwing ideas onto a page regarding the campaign setting.

Overall setting feeling: tech level a bit lower than Pathfinder—late dark age/early medieval instead of late medieval/early renaissance. Strictly limit number of intelligent humanoids. Instead emphasize human cultural differences.

Elves: hyper-sensitive to environment. Can become ‘grey’ if they wander too much. Could be highly xenophobic due to need to remain in local environment. ‘Color’ change could be painful or dangerous? Or simply undesirable. Brought into world as a side-effect of spirit or faerie plot? Sudden arrival could make for interesting situations.

Mountain-dwelling pegasus-riders. Skilled engineers who use a complex system of terraces and aqueducts to feed their nation. Pegasus used for messengers, defense. Favor skirmish style combat.

Primary human culture—rulers consolidate power primarily by establishing walled towns—similar to Japanese castle towns or Chinese towns. Inner walls encompass a core government district, while outer walls encompass rest of town, even some farmland or forest in a newer town. Note walls ineffective against pegasus riders…could this be an issue? Numerous distinct nations. Lower nobility might be scholars, bureaucrats instead of warriors. Capitals are fairly fluid, leading to a lot of political fluidity.

Religion: main culture is a spirit-oriented religion, where spirits may resemble Pathfinder creatures like dragons, elementals, etc. Spirits may or may not be the same thing as fey creatures. Spirits are a source of magic—but probably not directly; instead, they could act as teachers. As such, most mages would worship the spirit that teaches their school of magic, but there is also room for rogue mages that have greater versatility but strained relations with the religious community. Secondary religion could be more oriented towards ‘fairy magic’—druidic or enchantment spells.

How do spirit world, fey world, real world interact? Spirits and fey should probably be two different types of creatures that originate in the same realm. Spirits can only be killed in their natural form—normally manifest a form in the material plane. So killing one typically requires a journey to the spirit plane, or the spirit to enter the material world directly (probably bad news).

Need some folklore regarding spirits and fey (may not all be true).

Wise and benevolent ruler backed by an order of ruthless spies and assassins?

Desert elf raiders…ride scorpion-like creatures? ‘Dark elves’ in black volcanic desert/wasteland?

Combat Actions

Alright, time to steamroll through some mental roadblocks. Action time!

Pathfinder shares the same action system as 3.5 D&D, with full-round, standard, move, swift, and free actions. What I intend to do is to merge the standard and move actions into one type of action, the single action. So I would have double or full-round actions, single actions, swift actions, and free actions. Most actions are single actions, such as moving, making an attack, drawing or sheathing a weapon, drinking a potion, or readying a shield. Double actions include options like charging and running. Swift and free actions are unchanged. Spellcasting is a bit special; spell casting times will be given in actions, typically in the 1-4 range. These actions must be taken consecutively and without interruption—so you have to keep the spellcaster safe if they’re going to pull off their mega-spell.

One part I’m still unclear on is how multiple attacks will function. In its simplest form, a character can make two attacks—each a single action—per turn. This could present problems at the high end of play depending on the hit point system, as there’s no way to add additional attacks. On the low end, damage output is significantly increased compared to Pathfinder due to the option for the second attack.

Another possibility would be to make the attack action ‘non-repeatable’. A character could make however many attacks they get as a single action, and would have the other action free for a variety of options such as movement or improved defense. In this system, characters would default to a single attack and would gain additional attacks either as a function of tier or through a talent, probably requiring a prerequisite of a certain number of other combat talents. This makes the talent absolutely required for anyone who wants to be competent in combat, which seems problematic; on the other hand, anyone who wants to cast magic has to take the same core casting talents, so maybe that’s just something that’s built into my talent-based system. Having a talent like that might also open up the possibility for a mage talent that unlocks various metamagic-type abilities.

A third option, somewhat related to the first, is to have a double-action full attack. By default, this would be identical to making two single attacks, but certain talents would allow extra attacks or other variations. Alternatively, the third attack could be gained at a certain tier. I don’t think I want to allow more than three base attacks per round; since they’re all at the same bonus, that’s quite a bit of potential damage output. And while there’s less of a speed issue than in Pathfinder due to them all sharing the same bonuses, damage will take longer because of comparison to armor values, and I’d like to keep combat quick.

Of all of these, the non-repeatable attack is probably my favorite. It’s a little unfortunate in that it basically reintroduces the standard-move action combo, but I think options can be provided for the second action that will make combat more interesting. There might be some weird interactions with spellcasting as well—it shouldn’t be allowed as the second action after an attack, but some attack spells will require attacks. This will require a second look at how touch spells are handled, but should be resolvable. I still would like a way to give martial characters more attacks, and that will be difficult to do cleanly.

Distracted

So I may have gotten slightly distracted by modding Shogun 2 Total War...so while I have been working on games all month, my progress on Telharis has basically stopped. That said, I do have some rules that are basically just waiting on being written up so I should be back on track soon.