Random 3.5 Rules (size/ride/exploration)- Feedback pls

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Krusk
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Random 3.5 Rules (size/ride/exploration)- Feedback pls

Post by Krusk »

So i've been working on a couple of 3.5 rules/mods and wanted to get some feedback. They aren't particularly related, but why do 2 threads. I think both are at the "Ready for play" step, but figured some other eyes might help.

Rule 1 - Size
http://dnd-wiki.org/wiki/SRD:Movement,_ ... d_Distance
The goal of this rule is to make stuff bigger. If you read my 5e MM review, you can get a theme that stuff should be bigger.

The new size ranges for the given size categories are as follows.
fine - less than 1 inch - NA
diminutive - 1-6inch - under 1lb
tiny - 6inch-1ft - 1lb - 4lb
small - 1-4ft - 4-30lbs
medium - As written - As written
large - 8-32ft - 500lbs - 16tons
huge - 32ft-64ft - 16-125 tons
gargantuan - 64-150ft - 125-500 tons
collosal - 150ft+ - 500+ Tons

I'm less concerned about weight than height, because nothing follows those guidelines anyway. (small earth elemental vs colossal fire elemental)

The goal is basically to make stuff bigger and smaller. The next step would be to go through animals and see if they grow, or if they change sizes. Dragons would grow. Horses would not. Pixies would shrink. Bears would not. That sort of thing.

Rule 2 - Forced Rides
The goal of this rule is to introduce the ability to climb onto something's back, even if it doesn't want you to. That's a staple of action movies and its hard to do in 3.5. The rules.

Force Mount - Special combat action. As a standard action, you can forcibly mount a creature that is at least one size category bigger than you are. To start, you must be adjacent to the creature and enter its square. Then, make a touch attack. If successful, you climb onto them, and remain in their square. If the attack misses, you move back out of their space.

Once you climb onto a target, make an immediate ride check with a bonus based on size. You get +4 to this check for each size smaller than your target you are. This is opposed by your opponents grapple check. If you succeed you can remain mounted. If you fail, you are thrown free receiving 1d6 damage per size category bigger than you the target is. (Reflex DC 15 for half). Your target chooses which space you land in, but it must be adjacent to them. At the beginning of each of your turns, you must make a ride check as a move action (as described previously) or be bucked free.

At the beginning of the targets turn, they can attempt to throw you off as a standard action (as described above), or they can act normally. If they move, you move with them as normal for mounts. This ability gives you no special ability to move through earth, water, lava, walls, etc.

While forcibly mounted, the target is denied their dex bonus to attacks you make. In addition, you gain a +4 Dodge bonus to AC for attacks made by the creature. Lastly, you count as flanking for and with any other adjacent creatures.

I could add some feats for this I guess at some point.

Rule 3 - Blind Exploration
This rule is intended to make mazes easier, especially mazes the PCs are running through quickly and don't have time to think. It comes off a little "rules light" but I'm kind of OK with it, ish. It came up when my PCs had to traverse an underwater maze, without water breathing abilities.

Whenever the PCs need to quickly make a choice about which path they take the following skill checks are called for.

Survival DC 10 - You can reduce one of the paths before you to an obvious bad path. Through scent, sounds, wear in the path, or other. For every 5 you beat this DC, remove another bad choice. Randomly determine from the remaining paths which one you take. If you add 5 to the DCs, you can instead roll Knowledge Dungeoneering or Nature as appropriate.

So basically, I'm running down a hallway from a boulder. I see 3 doors ahead of me. I roll my check, and get 12, so I know one of them is an obvious trap door. I flip a coin to figure out which of the other two I burst through.

So... thoughts? Suggestions to make them better? Obvious pit falls I missed? If your DM broke these out would you ignore them/think they were cool and use them/be annoyed?
Last edited by Krusk on Sat Sep 05, 2015 1:41 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Foxwarrior
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Post by Foxwarrior »

I'd just like to point out that your weight and height table implies that Colossal creatures made of meat and bone are likely to be under 4 feet tall. Mmm... pancakes.
Krusk
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Post by Krusk »

What?

But also, like i said, less concerned with weight because nothing in 3.5 seems to follow those guidelines anyway. Much more concerned with height
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erik
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Post by erik »

I don't get Fox's observation either, unless it's that bone and muscle cannot support a creature that mass. I can get not caring about weight limitations since it's fantasy, but if you wanted to try to peg weights a bit better here's a real world example of a big-ass land creature. Argentinosaurus was 130' long and about 90 tons, so maybe have that be your guidepost to shave mass down by a factor of 5 or so for your top 3 tiers.

When I look at the size table what stands out to me is that one Large creature may be quadruple the height of another. That seems a bit bizarre. It doesn't bother me as much in small critters, but it seems like Large isn't granular enough. I'd rather go 8-16 on large, bump everything else down 1 notch and add an additional size class like Titanic at the top if you want to go bigger.

Elephants will become about triple in size or be bumped down a category, so long as you're looking at animals affected by your change.

I get that you want to make creatures bigger, but you can do that by just increasing sizes of specific creatures rather than remodeling the size categories.

Forced Riding:
could use some grammar cleanup, ending with you's is terrible.
Maybe allow climb or ride for the checks.
And the action to stay mounted at the start of every round should probably be a move action rather than a free action.

Dunno if it merits a sidebar reminder that the creature can make its own grapple touch attach to try and dismount and grapple with the thrill-seeking adventurer.

I'm not sure there's a need for blind exploration that isn't already filled by rogue trapfinding.
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Post by Prak »

I believe Fox is saying that the weights are not large enough at the upper ends for a creature of the given dimensions, unless they are 150' long and 4' tall.
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Post by Krusk »

Got it, I guess. Is the standard for me to edit the first post with the current draft, or should I make new posts with revisions in them?

Weight - I get that its pretty asspulled, but its got to include things like huge air elementals and small stone elementals. Would it be better to just not bother with talking about weight in the rules and glossing over it like 3.5 did?

Adding a new category - Yeah, I thought about adding a new one at the top, but thats basically what everyone does, and it always turns out shitty. I'd like to use as much of the existing rules as possible.

Maybe I expand medium to go to 10 or 12 ft tall?

Elephants - Yes, this means elephants would now be large. I'm OK with that, and think its fine.
I get that you want to make creatures bigger, but you can do that by just increasing sizes of specific creatures rather than remodeling the size categories.
So do you mean, just going through and saying "Most shit that says its large is actually huge"? Because my concern there is redoing a bunch of math for the size mods to stuff.

Forced Riding - Yeah, rereading that its terrible. Ill do a re-edit and spend some more time on it and repost. And sure, I can throw climb on there. More uses for skills seems like its always a good thing.

I bounced between move and free. I landed on free so you can still full attack and don't become less effective by riding stuff.

Sidebar - Probably.

Blind exploration - it came up in my game that they wanted to make snap decisions quickly about which door to check. Rogue trap finding is very "I take a minute and examine the ground for loose bricks". This was meant to be more "I make a snap decision while running and keep moving". It came up in our games, and I threw this together for the short term, and while throwing some random rules for feedback figured I'd throw it in. I don't know how groundbreaking or awesome it is. Like not enough to break out in an official rules document or anything, but seems like its worth having if stuck on page 14 of "additional skill uses" for some random campaign setting.
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Post by erik »

Krusk wrote:Got it, I guess. Is the standard for me to edit the first post with the current draft, or should I make new posts with revisions in them?
I edit the top post for a current copy. Other people may do otherwise, but that's how I do it.
Krusk wrote:
I get that you want to make creatures bigger, but you can do that by just increasing sizes of specific creatures rather than remodeling the size categories.
So do you mean, just going through and saying "Most shit that says its large is actually huge"? Because my concern there is redoing a bunch of math for the size mods to stuff.
But for Dragons the problem is that they start at Tiny which is shitty and this change doesn't fix that. I don't even have a problem with sizes for most non-dragon creatures, so I favor a targeted rather than general solution.

So since dragons need resizing anyway, you might as well just resize and tweak them so that their stats stay mostly the same and could not bother changing size fluffs for everything else.
Krusk wrote: I bounced between move and free. I landed on free so you can still full attack and don't become less effective by riding stuff.
I leaned towards move to keep from allowing a full attack since you're not really in an ideal situation. Riding a willing mount you still get full attacks, a bucking bull, not so much.

I'd give maybe The Edge and +4 Cover to AC to the rider, and Deny Dex bonus to the creature that is mounted vs. the rider, however, to give some mechanical reason to jump aboard.
Krusk wrote:Blind exploration
My group would metagame the hell out of it since 10 is a DC that anyone can make so long as they lack a wisdom penalty. It does seem to make Search and trapfinding a lot more useless. I think it's a bad rule, but if your table wanted it and and likes it then it works for your situation.
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Post by Krusk »

Yeah, I guess screw blind exploration. I don't mind the metagame actually, but it doesn't seem to add a lot.

And I think Ill just play with sizes as it makes sense on the fly. Just let the PCs know some monsters sizes (dragons/giants) are bigger than listed.
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Post by Krusk »

And it sounds like I'm adding my own collosal + rules...

Force Mount - Special combat action. As a standard action, you can forcibly mount a creature that is at least one size category bigger than you are. To start, you must be adjascent to the creature and enter its square. Then, make a touch attack. If successful, you climb onto them, and remain in their square. If the attack misses, you move back out of their space.

Once you climb onto a target, make an immediate ride check with a bonus based on size. You get +4 to this check for each size smaller than your target you are. This is opposed by your opponents grapple check. If you succeed you can remain mounted. If you fail, you are thrown free receiving 1d6 damage per size category bigger than you the target is. (Reflex DC 15 for half). Your target chooses which space you land in, but it must be adjacent to them. At the beginning of each of your turns, you must make a ride check as a move action (as described previously) or be bucked free.

At the beginning of the targets turn, they can attempt to throw you off as a standard action (as described above), or they can act normally. If they move, you move with them as normal for mounts. This ability gives you no special ability to move through earth, water, lava, walls, etc.

While forcibly mounted, the target is denied their dex bonus to attacks you make. In addition, you gain a +4 Dodge bonus to AC for attacks made by the creature. Lastly, you count as flanking for and with any other adjascent creatures.

Hows that? Also, I didn't see many ending with you's, just a lot of usage of You.
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