NOVUS Old School Hack

[imported_Witchking20k]

I'm uploading my Old School Hack doc for folks to check out if they wish.  I'm sending this off to players shortly as we're doing a 2 night adventure this weekend. 

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[imported_Rasyr]

You know, I was just skimming over this Old School Hack you did of Novus, and it occurred to me you could actually take this a bit further.....

Perhaps even go for something closer to an old BD&D type of feel (think the old BD&D Rules Cyclopedia type of thing.....), by making something akin to those level progression tables of sorts...

it will take me a little bit to throw together something to use as a bit of an example, but it may be an interesting exercise...







and then I continued looking at the document, and you added in some things I was thinking about.... hehee


Still think you should include Unarmed, and I was thinking that perhaps you should do levels 1-10.... And perhaps make Restricted Skills give a +1 every 3 or 4 levels....

Spells -- I might suggest breaking some of the spells into multiple parts -- for example, the base attack spells, miight do better as 2 spells (1 bolt spell, 1 higher level Ball/area attack spell)

The Combat Skills -- I know you broke them down into 3 skills (and I still think Unarmed should be added, though brawling MIGHT cover it for now, perhaps change Brawling to Unarmed, and then make Brawling an option under what I am proposing)

Basically Something along the following lines.... -- This table shows the specialties....

[b]Melee[/b]	[b]Missile[/b]	[b]Thrown[/b]	[b]Unarmed[/b]
Axes & Hammers Chains Plus Clubs Great Blades Heavy Blades Light Blades Pole Arms Short Blades Spears Staves Sword & Board (requires Heavy Blades) Two Weapon Combo (requires Light/heavy Blades)	Archery (requires Bows) Bows Crossbows Slings	Thrown Axes & Hammers Thrown Blades Thrown Spears	Brawling Boxing Martial Arts Sanju (requires Martial Arts) Wrestling

Then basically, add a Specialties and Combat Moves column to the tables, kinda like so....

Each specialty allows the selection of one of those Combat Skills -- If it is not a selected Specialty, then you only get 1/2 bonus (rounded down) and you cannot use Combat Moves with them)

the following tables show the total number of Specialties and Combat Moves allowed (i.e. they are split among the 4 combat skills available)

Warrior

[b]Level[/b]	[b]Favored[/b]	[b]Standard[/b]	[b]Restricted[/b]	[b]Combat Specialties[/b]	[b]Combat Moves[/b]	[b]Talent Points[/b]	[b]Spell Points*[/b]
1	+1	+0	+0	4	2	+2	+0
2	+2	+1	+0	5	3	+1	+0
3	+3	+1	+1	6	4	+1	+0
4	+4	+2	+1	7	5	+1	+0
5	+5	+2	+1	8	6	+1	+0
6	+6	+3	+2	9	7	+1	+0
7	+7	+3	+2	10	8	+1	+0
8	+8	+4	+2	10	9	+1	+0
9	+9	+4	+3	10	10	+1	+0
10	+10	+5	+3	10	11	+1	+0

Thief

[b]Level[/b]	[b]Favored[/b]	[b]Standard[/b]	[b]Restricted[/b]	[b]Combat Specialties[/b]	[b]Combat Moves[/b]	[b]Talent Points[/b]	[b]Spell Points*[/b]
1	+1	+0	+0	3	0	+2	+0
2	+2	+1	+0	3	0	+1	+0
3	+3	+1	+1	4	1	+1	+0
4	+4	+2	+1	4	2	+1	+0
5	+5	+2	+1	5	3	+1	+0
6	+6	+3	+2	5	4	+1	+0
7	+7	+3	+2	6	5	+1	+0
8	+8	+4	+2	6	6	+1	+0
9	+9	+4	+3	7	7	+1	+0
10	+10	+5	+3	7	8	+1	+0

You might also want to include some hit point progression in there as well... (not a lot of bloat, but some small increases....)

Just some suggestions...


Note: your PDF is missing the table for the Cleric and Magician (it reprints the one for the Thief...)

[imported_Witchking20k]

I initially thought of pre-purchasing the +3/+6/level in hit points.  But, got lazy/ran out of time

[imported_Witchking20k]

I am going to get feedback this weekend.  I can tell you what I am expecting to hear.  Players will want:

-HP/Level (as you suggested)
-+1 for restricted Skills at Level 3 & +2 at Level 5
-Class based Feats or Abilities: I was already thinking of discounting some Talents based on Class- or providing a Level trigger where you can select them as you advance
-Damage Dice instead of static Damage for Weapons and spells

But, this is just a a starting point...if we like it enough to want to keep playing I'm sure it'll grow.

Also I am designing it with the intention of playing from levels 1-5 only.

[imported_Rasyr]

I am going to get feedback this weekend.  I can tell you what I am expecting to hear.  Players will want:

-HP/Level (as you suggested)
-+1 for restricted Skills at Level 3 & +2 at Level 5
-Class based Feats or Abilities: I was already thinking of discounting some Talents based on Class- or providing a Level trigger where you can select them as you advance
-Damage Dice instead of static Damage for Weapons and spells

But, this is just a a starting point...if we like it enough to want to keep playing I'm sure it'll grow.

Also I am designing it with the intention of playing from levels 1-5 only.

In regards to level 1-5 versus level 1-10 -- Personally, I like what you are doing and the direction you are going. It is very interesting. However, what I am thinking about here, it room for possible future expansion. With only doing levels 1-5, then you are going to be limited in the types of creatures that they can fight in the long run (i.e. many high end creatures would simply bee too powerful....)

So, if we stick with 5 levels to begin with, how something like the following table, and that would then still allow for expansion to 10 levels (max) on down the road, and still  allow for using more powerful monsters both in the unexpanded, and the later expanded versions....

Warrior

[b]Level[/b]	[b]Favored[/b]	[b]Standard[/b]	[b]Restricted[/b]	[b]Hits[/b]	[b]Combat Specialties[/b]	[b]Combat Moves[/b]	[b]Talent Points[/b]	[b]Spell Points*[/b]
1	+2	+1	+0	+6	4	2	+2	+0
2	+4	+2	+0	+6	5	3	+1	+0
3	+6	+3	+1	+6	6	4	+1	+0
4	+8	+4	+1	+6	7	5	+1	+0
5	+10	+5	+2	+6	8	6	+1	+0

Just a few thoughts.... 

[imported_Witchking20k]

Duly noted on the creatures- one of the reasons I settled on 1-5 was that Novus does not have a whole lot of spells- 1-5 allowed me to do a scaled spell pick system without running out of spells....

[imported_Witchking20k]

I was going to use the spell gain roll that we had chatted about earlier- but after a few calculations figured out the average roll of a level 1 character would be 11+2+6= 19 and there were only a few sphere spells that had TNs below 20...that didn't seem very fun.  So, a spell pick seemed like a more immediate solution.

If we move forward with the Spell Level System I may alter the Casting TNs to be 13+ level*2(so, 15, 17, 19, 21, 23) and leave the scaling options the same.

[imported_Rasyr]

Hmm....

In regards to spells.....   

Remember that OD&D only had 9 levels of spells and that essentially you got a new spell level every other class level. If you needed to, you could do something similar, perhaps combine multiple schools of magic to give a greater selection overall...

You don't want a single character to have access to everything (i.e. spells, combat moves, etc..)

Also, my earlier suggestion to split spells into 2 or more spells, was  not meant for every spell, but only for certain ones, where the main effect could be changed out (i.e. from bolt to ball to cone -- it is possible that I should have done this for the core rules too, ahh.... hindsight...), the rest of the scaling options could be copied to each resulting spell.

Basically, what you essentially suggesting (or moving towards) here is something along the lines of the Spell Chains or Scalable Spell Lists idea that I was toying with back for RM/HARP back in 2008.

One suggestion that I would make would be to  take a closer look at the scaling options, and  figure out how they will affect casting level.....  In fact, you change the casting TNs to be based upon the spell's level, you could slightly rework the spells so that the casting options increase the casting level (and thus increase the casting TN). You could even dump Spell Points and do +1 to casting TN per each spell cast since the last rest (call it "Fatigue"), and then reduce this mod by 1 for every 60 minutes of rest (or 1 for every 30 minutes of sleep), allowing for unlimited casting, so long as the dice hold out (and then casting failures could have effects that also increase the total current mod to casting (i.e. each Snag Point = +2 to Fatigue? to simulate the stress and extra wear from a spell failure?)

You could then create a meditation type talent, where 30 minutes of meditation reduces Fatigue by xx Stat Bonus (with higher level versions that increase the Fatigue reduction....

Just a few ideas off the top of my head...

[imported_Witchking20k]

I had thought of using the Spell Scaling to create a base Bolt I, Bolt II, Bolt III and having them available at levels 1, 3, & 5 for example and doing the same to create Ball I, Ball II. at levels 2 & 4.  That way I could have "less powerful" versions of attack/defence spells available early.

If I keep toying with this that is likely how I will fill out the spell options. 

I would like to have the Casters Magecraft skill factor into something though...so, maybe you cannot access new levels without a certain amount of ranks or something...

We'll see how tonight goes.  I am definitely enjoying the core of this- are you feeling a bit of nostalgia?

[imported_Rasyr]

Hmm.. in the core rules, magecraft determines how many spells you can have. So, perhaps having Magecraft work for level access would work as well...

However, you will want to keep in mind the potential for expansion, so - perhaps like OD&D, where you access a level on every odd level (or every odd rank)....

ohh!!

or, your spell tables -- instead of having them be based on level, have them use ranks in Magecraft..... (and don't forget that you actually give som free ranks out at the time of chargen, so you want to work the max ranks  from them into it as well...

[imported_Witchking20k]

Good Idea- I could give the 5 tiers names like: Novice, Journeyman, Expert, Master, Legendary and require ranks to access them

[imported_Witchking20k]

So, the play test was fun.  The players made characters before we met on Friday and there was no confusion on how to do it.

We didn't use the action point system for some reason and just defaulted to a major, minor, & movement action each round. 

Levelling between 1 & 2 was super fast.  And that was basically the desired outcome of this Hack.  Everyone just added 1 Skill rank to both Favoured and Standard Skills and spent their talent point (one even saved it, meaning we might be continuing with the game).

A couple of suggestions:
1) add +1 to all talent costs and then have certain classes receive a reduced cost, or break them talents into Combat, Skill, General and Magical and assign a Favoured, Standard & Restricted cost...the idea is to make some more accessible than other by certain classes.
2) Damage Dice for weapons and spells
3) We used the wound threshold system that I outlined in the alternative damage thread for the 2nd session.
4) Using Magecraft as a "Cantrips" skill similar to HARP

I think there were others....but, I don't recall.  All in all it was a good time and worth continuing with my little project..

[Fidoric]

Seems great ! 

[imported_Rasyr]

Cannot wait to see your revised doc...

 

[imported_Witchking20k]

I'm going to plug away at it this week.  I have a couple of other ideas too.