Additions to be included in version 1.2

New Optional Rules:
Weapon Type Inherant Bonuses
Weapon Skill Talents

New 'Evolution' Classes:
Medic (or Cleric)


For realism, certain characteristics are inherant to certain types of weapon. This optional rule will add small bonuses to certain skills and HUD stats when wielding weapons of that type, but also add penalties. For example daggers are fast weapons, and are good at hitting soft sports (Initiative +1 Attack Roll +1) but poor at parrying and blocking blows with (Parry -1 Defence -1), while a Great Sword is powerful (Power Attack +2) but slow, and hard to parry with (Initiative -1 Parry -1). These are the kinds of effects I am thinking of.

Also, exceptional training in a particular weapon type would grant the user certain 'talents' with the weapon. For example, at tenth level in Bladed, small, the character could choose from a list of talents like "Parrying (Parry +5)", "Swift (Initiative +2)" or "Ambidextrous (Dual Wield +5)".

It has come to my attention that a dedicated healing class is not included. While I first thought perhaps a healing class was a bad idea, since anyone with magic skill and a justified reason to use it for healing could be a healer (Water magic could 'cleanse' ills magically, Earth magic could create natural chemicals found in plants to treat injury, the Light aspect can heal because it is the absolute governing positives, Dark aspect can theoretically destroy and rebuild the damaged parts, which is a more painful method of healing). But I think it is about time I considered a healing class that had special features to make it exceptional at healing.




As always; discuss, suggest, berate.

Excellent ideas, the weapon type bonuses will add a more strategic element when choosing ones weapon. Certain weapon types would then each have a use and would possibly give character's a reason to choose a certain weapon type for a reason and not just "I like swords/guns/gunswords/ect."

The weapon skill talents will (depending on how they end up for the more mage-orientated weapons) give all characters more reason to up their weapon skill levels. This could eventually evolve into 'weapon skill' special attacks that could be used once a combat or under certain conditions, though the idea of special weapon attacks may overpower characters somewhat as we already have weapon taints to take care of status afflictions.

I very much like the idea of a dedicated healer class, especially for games where alot of magic types are off limits. Healing easily becomes a problem when all you have to rely upon are a limited stock of healing items and the not so reliable healing skill (even worse if nobody in the party has the skill). Having a dedicated healing class, especially an evolution and/or ascension class would make things alot easier for those wishing to play the healer, or for those that are in a campaign that doesn't have the luxury of havin access to certain magic skills that could be used in it's place.

A possible (or not so possible) example of what the healer's ability could be:
Healing Knack (I'm sure Aidan will think of a better name for this though) :- The medic's superior knowledge of healing allows them to get better than usual results from their methods of healing. Whenever the medic succeeds on a Healing skill roll or a magic roll to heal a target, they may roll 2D6 and refer to the table below:
2-5: No additional healing, no decrease in recovery time.
6-8: Potency of healing increases by 25%, recovery time is decreased by 25%.
9-11: Potency of healing increases by 50%, recovery time is halved.
12: Potency of healing is doubled, target completely recovers from the wound as if it had never happened.

My opinion time sense is tingling.

I love the idea Xion, it would give healer characters a reason to take the mundane skill, and also, I think I will make the Medic/Cleric class a low-level ascension, something really low like Lv6, to make it appealing. I am going to take on your 'knack' idea, but I have two names in mind, and my Opinion Time nerve is getting twitchy, so:

The Touch
or
Lay On Hands

poll incoming.

EDIT: As the names suggest, I think a limit of "when within 5ft of target" is in order for this 'knack'

a Dedicated healer class suck's testicals because then you just making 11 paths more into a MMORPG, and Womble damn well knows it can be boring as hell

Healing depending on the setting should just be a skill or magical subsidiary thing

Like the Talent idea's we talked about maybe the Knowledge skill could benefit from it as well as just about a lot of other skills for that matter

For instance lets say I took "Knowledge Soldiering" and got 3-5 level and picked up a talent point to be blown in either - Weapon Expertise (Generic +1 to weapon use) or Battlefield Medic which might give me this special little ability to heal a few points of damage during or between fights and if I go off to invest more points in Knowledge Soldering I could pick up more special perks like a greater battlefield medic bonus or weapon expertise or Courageous Leader which lets me do a heroic warcry to encourage the party etc

I'm not saying it's a necessary thing but maybe if we make certain class's have special Knowledge skill's attained to their profession or just have it as an option admittedly it could kill of the point in taking classes but hell it's a nice thought hell if we done that we could even cut down on the classes altogether and have a streamlined system
- Rifleman/Ranger/Whatever(Shooting talents n Speed talents
Combatinant Class spreads to three different Class Knowledge skills - Merc (Mix and match of Talents with some Tactic's mixed in)
- Swordsman/Melee fighter (Toughness Talents n Melee Talents)

I don't intend to radically change the class system anytime soon. The six-base is working well enough so far.

I think you have a good idea here. Perhaps Mundane Skill Talents optional rules could be implimented also, to add diversity or specialisation for people who want more choice. I think eventually I'll take all these optional rules, detach them and put them in a special optional rules booklet...

As for not needing a dedicated healing class:
EDITED for NEEERRRD RAAAGE REMOVAL and tl;dr-ism: It may not be favorable to your tastes to have a healer. But it can't hurt to have the option there if it's needed.

maybe also have healing as a subsidery thing for fighters you'ld think all this combat you might pick up the knack of stopping minor wounds before finding somebody better at it to help you

But that's always a choice for the player to make. If they want to make their character that way, then the Medic skill is there for the taking. That's the point of a Class-and-skill system. The classes set the basis, then the players punctuate it as they choose.

On a note to Kev about healing, depending on how you see it I've always seen healing as abit of a dodgy thing, lets take two examples DnD n Savage worlds

DnD your still a full productive character no matter how fecked you even if your HP is at 1, while in savage worlds you get worse and worse and your stats go down

Unless we're going for Grim dark grit which I know you lot wont touch with a 10 foot pole HP will always in my personal opinion be "Just a flesh wound" or simply to put your Luck and ability to shrug off the damage, I've never seen anybody die in Aidan's games so I don't know how death works nor as far as I'm aware is it covered in the rules what happens do we get a WoD style BAM YOUR DEAD or DnD's terrifying count down or do we get Warhammer fantasy Every time you get hit past 0hp bad s%#t starts to happen randomly you get horrible slashed in the arm you get stabbed in the chest you loose limbs or you die in a spectacular bloody fashion as we learnt from Gaz's halfling in a Warhammer fantasy game the little f%#k didn't go down for a good 10 rounds before rob rolled a 10 n the halfling just sorta popped off n died

or is death in this like the video games your K.O. until you get the ever healing boot up your arse which we seem to be seeing more often now in video games or Final fantasy's Dues Ex Machina store shelf brought Phoenix down's?

If so I think that all character HP is just simply minor injuries that can be shrugged off with a good day or two's rest, it goes down because your loosing luck your getting groggy from wounds tiredness is setting in and when your Healed your "refreshed" God's grace is shining on you or that medi-stimm pack has put painkillers on your cuts and woke you up with a stimm booster or your not feeling so dizzy because those cuts have stopped bleeding now.
Basically all what as healer is doing is keeping the character alert and awake and aware of the combat to avoid any critical blows so once they hit 0 this combat has just gotten two much and they made a mistake they let their guard down and the cyborg viking sith slices of his arm and then states that he is the characters farther but maybe as an option once you start hitting by 0 you roll a chance dice on what happens the worst thing to happen is you get K.O.ed other things might involve getting wounded and you loose some points in Dex or Str or your scarred ugly and loose some Phy or Man as result or blunt truma makes you abit more dumb which could elevate to something worse like your Slashed badly with a mortal wound and will die in a certain amount of time to something worse like Limb loss and finally box car's or snake eyes results in BLARG DEATH

i beleive its proper death, ive only ever counted one death but that was because a character was stupidly overpowered, which was in a old version, but other than that im not sure how the death system works

Hit points are wounds on a body that can be fought through (either with being tough or just sheer adrenaline from the fighting) a good roleplayer will know to make his character ACT wounded, particularly those I know who have been to LARP. At 0 hitpoints, you have passed the limit of staying combat capable and collapse either too weak, or unconscious. The death threshhold comes after bleeding out, 10% of your max Health below 0 is the point at which your character is technically dead. Powerful enough magic (we're talking 10th character level magic) could restore a person from death, as long as it is done before they go brain-dead, and recussitation can save a just-dead character if it is done quickly enough and enough measures are taken to keep them alive after it succeeds.

I was sure I put this in the rules...

You did put it in the rules (the death at 10% of max hp under 0) though not much is specified other than that.
What happens though when a character is unconscious (at 0), or injured (below 0)? Can they still be targeted as normal or are they exempt from being targetted by certain actions.

The 1hp/round countdown to death wouldn't be as fair here since at lower levels a character would be dead at -3hp (the majority of characters having somewhere around mid 30's health at level 1), and higher level characters could survive for the majority of a combat without medical attention, though this is somewhat offset by enemies doing more damage at higher levels.

Having unconscious characters be able to be targetted by certain actions makes healing a wounded character or getting them out of harms way a more immediate concern, as they wont be able to defend incoming attacks (Unconscious characters will most likely not regenerate their Guard also until they are combat capable again).

Character death is something that has to be thought out more, it shouldn't be too easy to be just plain unlucky and die (though scott will most likely say opposite), but characters shouldn't also be able to survive almost indefinately though many rounds of combat without having medical attention of some sort. Death in the end isn't something they want a well working character to go through, but all the same it shouldn't mean the protagonists should have the "almighty plot-sheild" around them, though it can be reserved for certain situations (like a character slowly turning evil, thus becoming the antagonist of the same or later campaign *cough*Nocturne*cough*).
In short it should be a possiblity that characters die, though if it can be helped they shouldn't.

Scott actually complained about the ease of killing a certain character in the past (quote: "I shoot Womble[sic]").

for those who dont know, in the early days of the rulebook i created an evoker who had a pet fox, at one point the others tried killing the fox, i came in and saw them killing it so i helped to defend my fox, then when it went to scotts go he said "ok i shoot chris..." we realised his skill in fire arms means an auto hit unless crit fail, then we checked the damage it did, the damage did more than my max hp so it was an auto kill

That though isn't being plain unlucky, that was broken stats vs. a character with poor defense at work, which thankfully was fixed in the old system by giving a penalty to characters weilding a weapon of higher level than them, as well as the addition of Guard in the later versions of the old system. In the current system that isn't a problem thanks to the weapon and armour creation systems abd other factors.

What I mean is more along the lines of "oopsie I rolled a snake-eyes... and whoops snake-eyes again, sorry guys I'm dead". Which can happen in some systems when determining a simple fatality.

Remember the time Scott ran a game when my character was shot and some NPC was removing a bullet from me (Blame partially on myself there for playing a character with the 'wanted' disadvantage).

I still say preset points of damage varying for

Accidental 1-5
Half Damage
On Target 6-9
Main damage
Vital 10-11
Main damage plus half
Critial 12
Double Damage

Scott wrote:I still say preset points of damage varying for

Accidental 1-5
Half Damage
On Target 6-9
Main damage
Vital 10-11
Main damage plus half
Critial 12
Double Damage

Iz dat sum potential optional rulez?