True20... worth my time?

[erik]

This is sort of a cross-posting on Nifty as well...

I finally got a look at true20 (2 minute skim in a gaming store) and found that they do much of the changes (skill consolidations, dex is attack modifier- not strength, only 3 archtypes instead of classes) I did in my last homebrew. Mine was a lot more exhaustive of a rehaul since among other things I reduced everything down to 4 stats from 6, gave a heap of feats per level to totally define class features (including spellcasting progressions/lists). That made it a huge pain in the ass to remodify critters for combat encounters (especially since character level to power/CR ratio was way off after that. I'm thinking of scuttling my homebrew campaign and just converting it to true20. Should be easier on me.

On the Nifty forum Rob Knotts noted a major annoyance of the True20 system is that it still has the problem that monsters are made from different blocks than players. We're sort of addressing that already with the type discussion in a different thread here, so I'm thinking that I'll probably go about slowly making my own monster manual conversion where critters follow the same rules as characters (mostly), and likely borrow heavily from the [type] discussion.

Before I commit my soul to this heinous act, does anyone have any big reservations I should know of regarding true20? Is the spellcasting stuff garbage for example?

[josephbt]

what bugs me about true20 are various inconsistenties such as:

• 
  
• rage - gives a bonus to STR when used and a minus to defense. so what happens is that your bigger strength ofsets the defense penalty because you parry with STR. no reason not to take this feat.
  
• touch spells - eg. Harm - an adept using this spell cant dmg anybody except another adept and that has 50% chance to work. why? because you have to hit your opponent and his BAB is his defense. a warrior is 1/lvl bab, expert is .75/lvl and an adept is .5/lvl class.calculate a bit and you see that it doesnt work
  
• various dmg spells - inconsistent with one another. cold shaping is dmg supreme, all else is suckage.
  
• monsters - so being huge nets you a -2 to defense but a +8 to STR which gives you a +4 defense. err, what?? Instead of being nearly immune to dmg, a huge or larger creature will actually be unhitable, so dmg wont matter
  

thats of the top of my head

[erik]

Mental note, I hate parrying in all systems so far to date. I wonder how easy it will be to just scrap that crappy mechanic... prol'ly not too hard.

Damage spells I can likely just rewrite as Energy Cone or Energy Ball or Ray of Energy, etc.- keeping them all on relatively similar rails.

Thanks and keep em coming.

[erik]

Still going over it. Lots of stuff I like, lots of stuff I am not sure about, and lots of stuff that is retarded.

This is sort of a stream of consciousness over things that stand out as problems so far.

I'm disappointed that feats are so inferior to powers, considering adepts have the choice of either a power or a feat. Iron Will... or be able to bring people back from the dead. Tough call there.

The compensation is supposed to be that you have to take crappy adept levels in order to get powers, but I don't think that's enough. Trading a few raw numbers for real ultimate power is usually a safe bet. Once an adept uses a power to get better numbers and real ultimate power, it's over... and I think they can.

I'm not sure if I'm worried about cold shaping's damage superiority since the next power on the chain, elemental blast, is twice as powerful and functions exactly the same for fire, cold, energy, weather, and earth. Cold shaping is okay for damaging, yea, but every other type gets elemental blast next anyway, and that's way better for damage dealing.

I'm leaning more and more towards just ignoring parrying entirely. I hates parrying and haven't yet seen merit for keeping the mechanic around. Easy fix.

I dislike that powers are based upon adept level, since that is a big kick in the nuts to characters with just 1 or 2 powers which is ruinous for any super-powered type campaign or basically any character with 1 strong supernatural ability. So I'm definitely scaling power ranks by character level, and moving any level based power mechanics over to be rank-based instead. Easy fix.

I'm dabbling with the notion of just junking the adept class and upping feats to be worth taking when compared to powers. That's a lot of work though.

They nerf base saves in multiclassing, but there are only 3 "classes" so the dilemma of insane saves via massive multiclassing was never a worry. They really just overkilled it: -2 to base save bonuses granted by a class you didn't start with at level 1, and each class only has 1 good save to begin with. I'm just gonna pretend I didn't read that horrible butchering of multiclassing.

Rather than rewarding everyone for starting with 1st level of expert for 16 more skill points than any other role, it seems more prudent to just not give X4 skills at first level and instead grant a +3 proficiency bonus to any skill that a character has ranks in.

Their polymorphing needs work, but that is no surprise. Assuming a form whose average intelligence is lower than your average species makes you lose int over time, and if you ever lose enough int to have an intelligence equal to your new form's average, you become one of them and lose your identity, which means you basically become an NPC until someone notices that person who looks nothing like you, is you, and they use their mind power to fix you. So a human with a -1 int shape changes into half-orc form... BAM! Instant hose job.

So yeah, I've got my work cut out for me. It'll hafta wait until post-gencon though.

Hasta

[TarlSS]

I've reviewed the True20 system in depth, and I'm going to try it this Tuesday

As a mechanic, I like parrying. It gives strength some merit, and it can be overcome simply by using ranged weapons, which makes alot of sense. Ranged Weapons> Big Creatures.

Adept powers based via level is appropriate for regular D&D styled campaigns where one super powered power- like teleport, could really break the game if scaled by character level. You could take 10 adept levels and run around with 10 powers, and dump the rest into warrior and be a ridiculous powerhouse.
For a 'supers' game you might want to change things, but the True20 system really isn't suited for a high powered setting. You could make a general feat that 'ups your adept level by one for the purpose of powers' if you want to make like a warrior/adept or something.

Thanks to the nature of toughness, Adepts are very squishy, but can duplicate crazy effects like teleport/raise dead and have alot of non-combat utility. It is very much a system where you have to pay heavily for magic, which I do like.

Adepts aren't just paying in feats, they're also paying in point distro and defense. Adepts are ridiculously easy to hit, and Con is at most their secondary trait. Conceivably without magic, they have a max 24(10+10+4) defense at level 20. That's GARBAGE!
Fatiguing also gives penalties to saves (Toughness!) and defense. So he gets off one spell, and then gets annihilated with an autofire or power attack.

Assume form's 'permanent' penalty kicks in after an hour, and it makes twisted sense that you would adopt to a half-orc's thinking much quicker than say, a lizard's. It encourages taking the form of animals, and limits the spell's utility to create seperate identies- something that is more problematic than animal shaping in many campaigns.

My main issue is the teleport and apport powers. They're ridiculously powerful and accessible at first level. Teleport anywhere within sight? You're bringing the whole "Mage wins by level X because he can kite" default again. At least flight is -very- difficult.

True20 really fixes the "Mages are automatically better than everyone" issue that alot of magic-based games have. Anything but direct damage is relatively difficult to establish against fighting targets.

[erik]

1155149473[/unixtime]]Assume form's 'permanent' penalty kicks in after an hour

Ehhh, it's debatable I suppose.

The text reads "each hour you must make a Will saving throw (Difficulty 15), or lose a point of Intelligence. If your intelligence score drops to the natural level of the species, you become boned."

Well, except for the boned part that's spot on. You could say that it isn't technically dropping until you lose an int point, but it sure seems that the spirit of it was that if you are as dumb as the natural species, you are reduced to their level.

This has a curious effect of rewarding stupid races and punishing intelligence races. Not a mechanic I care for one whit.

[TarlSS]

It's an odd twist of logic certainly- but by no means unusable. It's a simple and solid mechanic with an odd loophole. This by no mean kills the power's utility, and frankly an hour's worth of time coupled with a DC 15 Will Save is plenty of time to get done what you planned on doing.
If you note, True20 is not the same as D20 where there is alot of merit in arguing the letter of the rules- the numerous typos and the psuedo casual way they are presented make that fairly clear.