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Races and Class feat paths
Awesome to hideously broken, in desperate need of playtesting.
Traits and Powers/Fighting Styles
//This is much more balanced than the Races & Classes page.
Prototype feat system
//An ephiphany on a way to make feat trees more streamlined, and more unique. As well as allowing to squish all those abilities into classes without making them completely broken.
Character Creation Walkthrough
Character Backgrounds ala Carte
RULES CHANGES
Heroic Potential – Starting at first level choose any one feat path in the above links. At 1st level you start out with the Initial feat of that path, and receive any expansion you qualify for as a free bonus feat at levels 5, 10, 15, and 20. Essentially if you pick a feat path with only odd number expansions (3,5,7,9) then you get that feat path for free.
You keep half your Base Defense Bonus for your passive defense.
Anything that gives a passive defense bonus also applies to reflex defense which makes shields a tasty option.
Saves are equal to your level.
Add half your character level to initiative checks. Improved initiative – Instead of +4 you may instead reroll initiative.
Quickdraw – Replace with: +2 Initiative, you may draw weapons as a free action and gain +1 hit against flatfooted opponents.
Normal: You may draw/ready a weapon as a swift action or as part of a move action.
Second Wind – As a Standard action regain half your bloodied value in HP and decrease your reserve pool by that much and get a +2 bonus to your Saves and Defense until the start of your next turn. You need at minimum that amount in your reserve pool to use the ability. If you posses the resilient toughness trait modify the ability to: When using Second Wind you may add your Constitution score to the amount.
Races – look at the R&C page for Human, Half-elf and others. Other iconic races will be of the 4e equivalent use this page to look up stats of Elves, Eladrin (+1 damage with 1H Swords and Spears), Halflings (+1 damage w/ slings and rocks), and Dwarves (+1 dmg with hammers and axes).
Fighting style feats may be purchased with bonus feats you receive from your base class, i.e. Armigier, Archer, Weaponmaster etc. but you must meet the Mastery level requirements for them as usual, i.e. Whip Dancer requires defense mastery so some classes will be out of luck.
Arcanist Quick fix, spell levels mana cost is equal to it’s level * 2. So Fireball costs 6 mana. They’ll keep the same Feat mastery and skills of course.
Condition Track (C.T.) – There are 5 steps on the condition track. You move down one step on the condition track whenever your damage threshold is exceeded. For each step you are on the condition track you take a cumulative -1 to Attacks, Skills, and Defenses. So someone who has had their damage threshold exceeded 3 times would have moved down the condition track (C.T.) 3 steps and takes a -3 to Attacks, Skills, and Defenses. If you cannot move further down the condition track you are rendered unconscious.
Damage Threshold – This is your Will defense or Wisdom score (whichever is higher) vs Psychic attacks & your Fortitude defense or Constitution score (whichever is higher) vs everything else.
Rule of Cool – Whenever you give a nice description of your actions for skills or even attacks I can award up to a +3 Style bonus on rolls.
Fate Points {Similar to Destiny Points} – You have a number of Fate Points equal to your character level. Fate points can be used for a number of things, one commonly used ability is to be able to reroll any one roll, even hit points. However, once you use a fate point it’s gone, it doesn’t refresh, a limited resource. Other options include cheating death, making an enemy reroll a saving throw, acting out of turn (immediate reaction) and adding +5 to your next roll.
A Fate Point can also be expended to initiate dramatic action. Dramatic action essentially puts control in the players hand, letting him do very heroic things that the rules wouldn’t normally allow. Such as clamping onto the blade of a murderer giving time for your companions to escape, getting back up when you should already be dead, holding up a crumbling building, jumping into the mouth of a giant icewyrm to rescue a friend, or delivering a rallying speech for citizens to fight for their freedom. There is a limit to dramatic action though, no amount of drama is going to help you grapple the tarrasque, bend adamantine bars with sub par strength scores, convince some happy citizens to rebel against a good king. Also, during dramatic action your minimum damage is equal to your level.
Motivation – If you’ve been looking over the R&C page then you’ve seen a lot of references to motivation. Motivation essentially describes your raison d’etre (reason for being). What is it that drives you, what caused you to become an adventurer and remain one. Motivation can be divided up into two parts, over arching goals (long term) and relative goals (short term or constants). I’ll give a few examples below which will hopefully give you a good idea of what to say for your character.
This will be useful for those of you familiar with the Order of the stick. Roy’s overarching goal is to fulfill the blood oath that his father made to slay the Lich Xykon. His current/short term goals tend to fluctuate but recently it was to stop the magical binding gates from being destroyed. In the past it has also been to stop the linear guild, protect his sister, and get his sword reforged. Your overarching goal should generally stay the same (unless of course you accomplish it), and your current/short term goal is very flexible and can change depending on what’s happening. However, your motivation should be noteworthy and not a simple task, no butter my toast in the morning or travel from point A to B.
Another example would be an NPC that I’d hope you’re somewhat familiar with, the elven ranger Train. His current goals are to defend the village of Neferander (which is about to be overrun by ogres) and also to keep you chumps alive (since you could be useful allies, especially when it comes to fighting an ogre army). His overarching goal deals with his backstory, it involves slaying a certain Arch demon. Crazy stuff huh? None of these three motivations are particularly easy (keeping you guys alive especially!) and probably won’t be fulfilled without some epic scenes. As a general rule of thumb, I’d say as a minimum have 1 current/short term goal and one overarching goal. More ambitious players may have many, but make sure you attend to them (and that they don’t conflict with each other).
Benefits to having motivations – Motivations contribute to dramatic effect. I’m much more likely to let someone at -6HP stand back up and keep fighting if his only relative left in the world is about to be eaten. There are also a number of abilities that will provide you with significant bonuses should you be acting in a way concurrent with your motivation, or would take you one step closer to fulfilling it. Motivation also gives the PC’s something to do. This driving force is especially potent since you’re not really forced to go anywhere in this upcoming campaign, if you want to head straight to the pinnacle of the center mountain and end the threat of raiding giants once and for all then by all means. If you want to go burn the beastman village to the ground after they ransack the northern continent go right ahead. The adventure should be about what the player’s and their characters want to do. It’ll be more fun that way y’know.
If you manage to actually complete a motivation, or reach an important milestone (for the especially hard to complete ones i.e. reach godhood status) you will be rewarded. Such as bonus experience, fate points (normally you receive one per level), and other permanent rewards. Possibly a bonus feat, magic item, stat increase, a fief of land, heck maybe even a kingdom.
One last thing though. It’s generally good to share your motivations OOC so that no ones motivation will come into direct conflict with another, not to say that they can’t struggle with each other (two players both wanting to become the new king of a kingdom is certainly interesting) but nothing that will alienate you from one another or cause you to clash head on. D&D is a game of teamwork after all.
Groups & Factions
Forces of Chaos – A cult dedicated to sowing the seeds of chaos across the island. Their primary targets are the elemental poles, yet no town is truly safe from their raids. The majority of the Chaos’s legions are composed of Dwarves which represent a minority on the surface. They make their homes deep in the underdark. With the underdark’s winding passages and general labryinth structure it is difficult to locate or track them down, however it does not stop the the addled, twisted mines of Chaos from popping up all over the isle. The forces of Chaos are known to have an exceptional knowledge of Alchemy and are the source of homunculi and other twisted experiments.