d20 Modern stuff
Feb. 17th, 2003 10:32 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
the_gneechWell, given that it's been snowing for the past three months and still going to be snowing until August, I spent yesterday working on my d20 Modern idea.
For those of you who may be unfamiliar with d20 Modern, it's basically a variant of 3rd Edition D&D, designed to work in a contemporary urban setting, instead of for dungeoncrawling. Most of the actual gameplay rules are close enough to D&D that if you know one, you can easily navigate the other, but the character creation process is a bit different.
Because d20 Modern has to be more generic than D&D, they decided not to sit around thinking of the various types of professions that would make character classes, but made generic, ability-based classes instead. Thus, instead of making "Soldier," "Ninja," and "Gadgeteer" to replace "Fighter," "Thief," and "Wizard," they came up with six basic classes that can apply to anyone, with classes based on a stat: Strong Hero (Str), Fast Hero (Dex), Tough Hero (Con), Smart Hero (Int), Dedicated Hero (Wis), Charismatic Hero (Cha).
Once you've picked your starting class, you then determine your character's starting occupation, which is a longer list of things like "Academic," "Adventurer," "Military," "Emergency Services," "Celebrity," and so forth. This modifies your skill list a bit and may provide you with a bonus feat.
Since this will be our first game with d20 Modern, I decided that I would write up a bunch of pregenerated character templates for Frisk and Camstone to choose from. Unlike our attempt to do Deadlands d20, I didn't write up actual characters (i.e., no names, personalities, etc.), just collections of stats around a concept (driving ace, tough guy, thrillseeker). Also unlike Deadlands d20 and my D&D campaign, I'm limiting them to one character each, to avoid a recurring problem with character ability confusion.
So basically yesterday I built nine first level d20 Modern characters, which gave me a crash course on the strengths and weaknesses of the system, and I have a few observations.
First, it seems that the most effective character design, at first level, uses either the Fast Hero with an 18 Dex, or a Smart Hero with an 18 Int. Strong Heroes or Tough Heroes in particular have no skills, which in a contemporary setting is hardly a tradeoff for that +1 BAB.
Second, and I've known this for a while, the default character stat set (provided for D&D, Star Wars, and other WOTC d20 games) makes for nerf characters. (The default stats are 15, 14, 13, 12, 10, and 8 ... which makes the default bonuses +2, +2, +1, +1, +0, -1. What was that about all the characters seeming exactly the same?)
Since I tend to run magic-poor games, where characters don't easily come across "Amulets of Stat Munchkining," I tend to go with much higher initial stats. That, plus, I like to start with fairly competent characters, so they can get to the good stuff faster. So I increased the range of starting characteristics a bit, and it made an impressive difference on how effective the characters were.
Third, the d20 system hates martial artists; just loathes them. Anybody who's tried to play a monk in D&D can probably vouch for this. I think this is an extension of the fact that d20 hates unarmed combat, for reasons I have never been able to figure out.
This probably isn't a problem in our group -- I'm the only one who gets into martial artists in a big way -- but it still irks me. After seeing martial artists get top-notch treatment in games like HERO System or Street Fighter, seeing them get systematically kneecapped in d20 just makes my teeth grind.
Fourth, don't expect to have any interesting abilities at first level. First level characters have to burn up all of their feats just to get some basic abilities (ability to use guns without a -4 penalty, for starters). First level characters are pretty darn fragile all around, and with no magical healing readily available, you can expect to see a lot of first level characters taken down for the count after their first encounter ... and their second, third, fourth, and fifth encounters. At least in D&D there's usually a cleric around with a cure light wounds handy.
To make up for this, d20 Modern gives your character some kind of goody, either a bonus feat or a class talent, every level. That, combined with the regular bonus feats at fourth and eigth level, means that by the time you've reached tenth level, most characters have five talents and either nine or ten feats. Inflate-o-rama! Personally, I would rather have characters start out with all the basic competencies and maybe a specialty or two, and then have new abilities come very slowly. That, alas, would require starting the game at third level or so, and then giving out exp. at something like half the usual rate ... which I may very well do if/when I start another D&D game in the future.
It's interesting to note that the basic classes only have ten levels each, the advanced classes are designed to be available around fourth level, and that the writeups for "high level" NPCs stop at tenth. That suggests to me that they're not really expecting games to go past tenth.
-The Gneech
For those of you who may be unfamiliar with d20 Modern, it's basically a variant of 3rd Edition D&D, designed to work in a contemporary urban setting, instead of for dungeoncrawling. Most of the actual gameplay rules are close enough to D&D that if you know one, you can easily navigate the other, but the character creation process is a bit different.
Because d20 Modern has to be more generic than D&D, they decided not to sit around thinking of the various types of professions that would make character classes, but made generic, ability-based classes instead. Thus, instead of making "Soldier," "Ninja," and "Gadgeteer" to replace "Fighter," "Thief," and "Wizard," they came up with six basic classes that can apply to anyone, with classes based on a stat: Strong Hero (Str), Fast Hero (Dex), Tough Hero (Con), Smart Hero (Int), Dedicated Hero (Wis), Charismatic Hero (Cha).
Once you've picked your starting class, you then determine your character's starting occupation, which is a longer list of things like "Academic," "Adventurer," "Military," "Emergency Services," "Celebrity," and so forth. This modifies your skill list a bit and may provide you with a bonus feat.
Since this will be our first game with d20 Modern, I decided that I would write up a bunch of pregenerated character templates for Frisk and Camstone to choose from. Unlike our attempt to do Deadlands d20, I didn't write up actual characters (i.e., no names, personalities, etc.), just collections of stats around a concept (driving ace, tough guy, thrillseeker). Also unlike Deadlands d20 and my D&D campaign, I'm limiting them to one character each, to avoid a recurring problem with character ability confusion.
So basically yesterday I built nine first level d20 Modern characters, which gave me a crash course on the strengths and weaknesses of the system, and I have a few observations.
First, it seems that the most effective character design, at first level, uses either the Fast Hero with an 18 Dex, or a Smart Hero with an 18 Int. Strong Heroes or Tough Heroes in particular have no skills, which in a contemporary setting is hardly a tradeoff for that +1 BAB.
Second, and I've known this for a while, the default character stat set (provided for D&D, Star Wars, and other WOTC d20 games) makes for nerf characters. (The default stats are 15, 14, 13, 12, 10, and 8 ... which makes the default bonuses +2, +2, +1, +1, +0, -1. What was that about all the characters seeming exactly the same?)
Since I tend to run magic-poor games, where characters don't easily come across "Amulets of Stat Munchkining," I tend to go with much higher initial stats. That, plus, I like to start with fairly competent characters, so they can get to the good stuff faster. So I increased the range of starting characteristics a bit, and it made an impressive difference on how effective the characters were.
Third, the d20 system hates martial artists; just loathes them. Anybody who's tried to play a monk in D&D can probably vouch for this. I think this is an extension of the fact that d20 hates unarmed combat, for reasons I have never been able to figure out.
This probably isn't a problem in our group -- I'm the only one who gets into martial artists in a big way -- but it still irks me. After seeing martial artists get top-notch treatment in games like HERO System or Street Fighter, seeing them get systematically kneecapped in d20 just makes my teeth grind.
Fourth, don't expect to have any interesting abilities at first level. First level characters have to burn up all of their feats just to get some basic abilities (ability to use guns without a -4 penalty, for starters). First level characters are pretty darn fragile all around, and with no magical healing readily available, you can expect to see a lot of first level characters taken down for the count after their first encounter ... and their second, third, fourth, and fifth encounters. At least in D&D there's usually a cleric around with a cure light wounds handy.
To make up for this, d20 Modern gives your character some kind of goody, either a bonus feat or a class talent, every level. That, combined with the regular bonus feats at fourth and eigth level, means that by the time you've reached tenth level, most characters have five talents and either nine or ten feats. Inflate-o-rama! Personally, I would rather have characters start out with all the basic competencies and maybe a specialty or two, and then have new abilities come very slowly. That, alas, would require starting the game at third level or so, and then giving out exp. at something like half the usual rate ... which I may very well do if/when I start another D&D game in the future.
It's interesting to note that the basic classes only have ten levels each, the advanced classes are designed to be available around fourth level, and that the writeups for "high level" NPCs stop at tenth. That suggests to me that they're not really expecting games to go past tenth.
-The Gneech
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no subject
Date: 2003-02-17 08:20 am (UTC)Good luck with your game.
roleplay
Date: 2003-02-17 11:29 am (UTC)I've not played 3rd Ed D&D, but i'm not entirely sure how well their (Wizards of the Coasts) generic system works. I think there are a lot better systems out there. 'Fading Suns' (http://www.holistic-design.com/FS/FSmain.htm) is a great game -in a similar setting to 'Dune'- which is a well balanced system for guns, swords and hand to hand combat.
I'm running a 'rifts' (http://store.palladiumbooks.com/Merchant2/merchant.mv?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=1001&Product_Code=800&Category_Code=R800) campign at the moment, but i don't think i'd recommend their system.
Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay (http://www.hogshead.demon.co.uk/WarhammerFRPindex.htm) is a good -but fantasy only- system (it's got a nice grisly critical hit thing :P )
And finally, my favourite is SLA Industries (http://www.nightfall.co.uk/index.php?page=index). A good combat/skills system, but i'd be impressed if you could find it. Oh, and it's got that amusingly dark, British sense of humour.