[Mechanics] House Rules and Character Creation

[UrsprungDerLiebe]

Character Creation:

Ability Score Generations:
Ability scores will be generated on a sliding scale. Each of your abilities begins at 12. You may raise any ability, but for each ability you raise, you must lower two other abilities. You can raise an ability by several points, mixing and matching which you lower. For example, if you wanted a Strength of 15, you could lower two abilities by 3 each, or two abilities by 2 and two others by 1, or one ability by 3 and three others by 1. Moving abilities above 15 or below 6 is not allowed at character creation.

Don’t worry too much about your abilities being low at creation; at the end of the prologue you will receive a boost based on which abilities you’ve been relying on.

Weapon Proficiencies
We'll be using theWeapon Group Proficiencies variant.

Character Sheets
On your character sheet, please include the following:
A list of the adjustments you've made to your stats. (tracking it by individual change; for example, your first change might be: Str +2;Int -2;Wis -2 If your Strength goes up another point, but penalizes different stats, that would be another entry: Str+1;Dex-1;Cha-1)
Your starting weapon proficiency.
Your power; I will let you know how often it is usable, if I haven't already, when I review the sheets.

Do not include any possessions or gold right now; that will be determined later on.

Literacy
I'm not granting automatic literacy. You don't need an argument for your character to be able to read or write, but you do need to spend 2 skill points.

[UrsprungDerLiebe]

Health and Wounds
The interaction between HP and damage dealt and death will work the same you’re used to. However, in addition to all that I am introducing a wound system. Whenever a character is struck for damage above a certain threshhold, they must roll a Fortitude save or receive a wound, which implies various penalties depending on where it is located. The penalties from a wound can be lessened or negated by a successful Heal check, but the wound itself needs to be healed the same way HP are healed.

The entire system is bulky, and so I’m not going to post it all on here, but in the interest of making this element of the system transparent:

Damage Threshhold Your damage threshhold is how much damage you can take in a single hit before risking a wound. Your damage threshhold is equal to one half of the hit die you receive at level 1, + your Con modifier, + 1 / each additional HD you’ve received. The toughness feat adds 1 to your damage threshhold each time it is taken. Natural healing every night is equal to your threshhold.

What does a wound mean?
Wounds confer penalties on actions associated with the body part they are on. Which body part they are on is sometimes a factor of the attack; otherwise, it will be randomly determined. The severity of the penalty scales from mild (-1 on all associated checks) to severe (associated checks are essentially impossible). How serious the wound is depends on how much damage is in the attack (so an attack dealing damage equal twice your threshold is twice as bad as an attack just dealing your threshold); additionally, receiving a second wound in the same location as a first one increases the severity.

Healing wounds
Healing, from whatever source, applies to reducing wounds before restoring hp (unless you have no health remaining, in which case you are restored to 1 hp before any wounds are healed). Healing applies to the most serious wound first. If the healing received is not enough to reduce a wound from one category to the next most serious category the healing carries over, and the wound is reduced when more healing is received (as long as this is within 24 hours).


In addition to the wound system -
Dying
Using one of the many wonderful variants in UA, there is no longer any such thing as negative hit points. Instead, upon reaching 0 hit points, a character makes a fortitude save. Failure indicates the character begins dying (if any or all of the damage is non-lethal, the character instead falls unconscious).

[UrsprungDerLiebe]

If you don’t like reading long chunks of mechanics, you can skim this; I will explain everything you need to know as it comes up (most of this will be done in secret, however)

I will be using a modified version of Sanity for this campaign. For reasons I think should be obvious, I will be keeping your scores and checks secret from you, as well as the exact nature of the system. You will be informed when your sanity drops in a way that will impact your performance.

Changes you should know:
* “Permanent insanity” is not permanent or irreversible, but reaching that threshhold will have some nasty side effects.
* The immediate effects on mechanics will be mostly short-term (the length of an encounter, or until the next time you rest). Long-term effects will need to be roleplayed as your character evolves. I will try to leave them open-ended as possible, so you can incorporate them into your character.
* Use of magic will often, but not necessarily, cost sanity. The costs will be much lower than outlined in the article, in any event.
* Anything that formerly cost experience will now cost Sanity. This includes forging magic items and casting spells powerful enough to drain experience.
* Restoring Sanity with the Heal skill will only function under particular circumstances; if you do not meet these circumstances, I will either explicitly tell you or drop hints when you fail, depending on why it will not work.


I will also be using a modified version of Corruption, from Heroes of Horror. I may post up some of the changed mechanics when I figure it out.

[UrsprungDerLiebe]

Homebrew Feats:
In progress.

Extra Power: You know one additional 0 level effect.
Requirement: Able to cast 1st level spells. You may take this feat once for every point of bonus you have to your spellcasting stat (so a Wizard with 17 Intelligence can have as many as 3 extra powers. Should he increase his Intelligence to 18, he may take this feat again)

Improved Power: You can use your power as often as if it were one category lower. 3/day > 3/hour > d4 rounds > at will. If you have an at will power that requires concentration (such as Detect Magic or Detect Poison), application of this feat reduces concentration from a standard action to a move action. You can take this feat more than once; each time you apply it to a new power or increase the frequency of use again; this can reduce a concentration power to a free action if applied twice.

Tough: Receive +4 to Fortitude saves to resist receiving wounds.

Strong Fortitude: Increases your wound threshold by 2.
Prerequisite: Tough

Vicious Strike: Increase the severity of any wound caused by your attacks with one type of weapon.
Prerequisite: Weapon Focus with weapon type

Wound Mender: Can use Heal to alleviate symptoms from more serious wounds.

Weak Composition: Every time you take Sanity damage, you may exchange it for physical damage instead. You can exchange up to (CL + Wis bonus) points of each loss.

Sterner Stuff: Receive +4 to Will saves to resist sanity damage.

Resilient Mind: Heal double the normal amount of sanity damage every night.

Fear no Evil: Can choose to apply natural healing of Sanity to reduce Corruption.

Tireless: Reduce penalties from going without sleep by one category.

[UrsprungDerLiebe]

Spellcasting and Sanity

Spellcasters tap into powerful arcane and divine energy wells, and use that energy to bend reality around them. There's only so much they can take of this before it starts to whittle away at their mind. Under this ruleset, your spells per day indicate how many spells you can cast before you start risking sanity damage. (spells that formerly cost experience are an exception to this; as is the standard rule that you can spend experience instead of a costly material component - these cost sanity no matter how many spell slots you have available) You can continue casting spells after you've hit your limit, at the cost of your mind's health. Beware of using this too much - all your party needs is for you to cast a spell that lets you breathe fire for two minutes, then go out of your mind with rage, or start hallucinating enemies where they aren't.

Metamagic and Sanity
Instead of using up a higher level spell slot, you can use metamagic feats on a spell at the cost of sanity. Similarly, a spontaneous caster can use up sanity instead of taking a full round action to cast. Under this variant, spontaneous casters can take Quicken Spell and always risk sanity loss when using it.

[UrsprungDerLiebe]

Favored Enemies

Favored enemies in this campaign will not include Human as a category, as most everyone you ever meet will be human. Your choices are the following:
- Animal
- Undead
- Vermin
- One who primarily deals slashing damage in meleeSword Fighter
- One who primarily deals blunt damage in meleeClub Fighter
- One who primairly deals piercing damage in meleePitchfork fighter
- One who primarily uses arcane magicArcanist
- One who primarily wields divine magicPriest
- One who primarily wields psionic powerMentalist
- One who primarily fights with their own bodyMonk

The skills will work against anyone who is currently acting as their type, or has specialized in it. The combat advantages will apply to anyone who is currently using the technique described. This gives some flexibility in who is targeted at lower levels, and less at higher levels, where people are more specialized but you will have more favored enemy types.

If anyone has an idea on how this can be improved, let me know.